When multiple companies come together to form a larger, stronger entity, many people question who handles mergers and acquisitions behind the scenes. This is a pretty tough job, since those who oversee the combination of multiple corporate entities often have to make sure that staffing, supply chain features, manufacturing, headquarters, and other key elements of each business do not overlap or create excessive, expensive redundancies. There is, for this reason, a specific person in every business who steps up to the plate when a merger, acquisition, or hostile takeover is about to begin. Their job is to manage a large team of professionals who collaborate while investigating every detail of the transaction.
Meet the Mergers and Acquisitions Manager
Virtually every major corporation has at least one Mergers and Acquisitions Manager who is tasked primarily with determining the necessity of a merger and all of the details that will make that process go smoothly. This manager is often an MBA graduate with extensive corporate management experience in other departments, primarily in fields like finance, accounting, operations, or regulatory compliance. Managers who take on mergers and acquisitions do not deal with this process on their own, however.
When a merger deal is agreed upon and announced, they oversee a team of professionals from both companies that pore over every financial and physical detail. Over the course of several months, they make a list of combined efficiencies, redundancies, and areas of opportunity, and make specific recommendations to executive leadership about how to combine the companies to save costs and boost revenues.
The Qualifications: What Does it Take to Manager Mergers and Acquisitions?
Those who specialize in mergers and acquisitions typically do not start their career in this particular department. Instead, managers of complex transactions like these are typically among the most seasoned executives and department leaders of the companies that are coming together to form a larger entity. Their expertise at overseeing the combination of multiple businesses comes from their actual managerial experience. That means they’ve worked at the senior management level or in an executive capacity in the past. For the best chance at success in this role, the manager must have worked in business operations, corporate accounting, senior finance positions, or regulatory compliance.
Each of these positions gives the M&A expert the background they need to understand how the deal will affect every worker and larger department in both organizations. They’ll be able to understand how combining resources and eliminating redundancies will help the company with its strategic plan in the future. With a complex management background and a willingness to take on this new challenge, M&A experts are more able to get the job done without offending regulators, losing thousands of employees, or creating mountains of debt that might otherwise suffocate the newly combined company for months or years after the official merger or acquisition has been completed.
Related Resource: Certified Internal Auditor
An Increasingly Popular Position in an Era of Consolidation
The business community has entered a renewed era of consolidation and mega-mergers. Whether it’s successful mergers like those between American Airlines and U.S. Airways, or the proposed deals that exist between major telecommunications and entertainment companies, the need for M&A experts is real and apparent. Those who wish to take part in this process must pursue advanced management education, accrue plenty of workplace experience, and have an eye for detail. According to Investopedia, this creates the kind of person who handles mergers and acquisitions with ease.
