M&A advisory that tests whether the deal can be run, not only whether it can be closed.

The plan has to survive the close. Most transactions are priced, financed and lawyered thoroughly and integrated on hope: the operating problem is usually visible in diligence, and the growth plan is usually what pays for the deal, yet neither is tested by anyone who has had to run the combined business. We open every transaction engagement with a feasibility view: whether this integration can be executed by this team, at this pace, without losing the customers, people and throughput the price assumed. We do not arrange financing, underwrite the transaction or take a fee on it closing. The practice is led by operators who have carried the P&L through a transaction, with community banking and capital-markets context on the bench.

Can this integration be executed by this team?

Every transaction engagement opens with that question and ends with one of three answers: feasible, feasible with conditions, or not feasible. Answering it means looking past the model at the operation: which customers and contracts actually transfer; which people the business cannot run without, and whether they will stay; where the two processes, systems and cultures collide; what the synergy line assumes about throughput that has never been demonstrated; and whether the management team has the bandwidth to run the base business and the integration at the same time. The finding says where the deal will strain before the price does.

Call before the letter of intent, or when the deal is signed and the integration plan is still a slide.

Before the letter of intent is the best time, because a feasibility view then shapes what you offer and what you ask for. During diligence is the usual time, when operational and commercial diligence needs someone who has run the operation to read it. After signing is the last useful time, when the integration plan is a slide and the first hundred days are about to be improvised. On the sell side, the same discipline positions the operation and the process so that a buyer’s diligence finds what you already know, on your timeline rather than theirs.

A written transaction finding, diligence you can act on, and a post-close plan with owners and dates.

Buy-side: target screening against an operating thesis rather than a multiple, a written transaction and integration-risk finding, operational and commercial diligence support, and a post-close plan with owners, dates and the milestones that prove the synergy line. Sell-side: positioning, diligence readiness and process management from people who know what a buyer’s operators will look for.

When the answer is feasible, the same principal can stay through the first year, as an advisor with a defined end date, or as an operating partner inside the combined business with compensation tied to the milestones the deal was priced on. We do not provide capital, arrange financing or underwrite transactions, and we take no success fee, so our finding reads the same whether or not the deal closes.