PODCAST · business
M&A Science
by Kison Patel
M&A Science, hosted by Kison Patel (Founder & CEO of DealRoom), is your go-to podcast for mastering the art of mergers and acquisitions. Each week, Kison and his expert guests from leading brands like Xerox, FastLap, and Cisco dig deep into real-world M&A strategies, offering actionable insights to optimize your M&A practice.Whether you're an experienced practitioner or new to the field, M&A Science provides practical advice on key topics like sourcing, due diligence, integration, divestitures, and more. With over 300 episodes, this podcast is the premier thought leadership resource designed to streamline your deal-making process.Start listening today and visit mascience.com/podcast to access over 300 episodes. Brought to you by DealRoom, the leading M&A optimization platform used by the best M&A teams around the world
Episodes
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M&A Horror Stories
A partner's spouse joined a call two weeks from closing. One background check later, a PE deal was dead, along with every dollar spent on diligence and attorney fees. Kison gathered the deal stories practitioners leave out of case studies, with the names removed. Corporate development leaders,...
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The Vendor Trap That Derails Carve-Outs
Days before closing a carve-out, Danielle Fortier's team found the seller's vendor list was off by dozens of vendors. Danielle, a partner at Cooley with four corporate carve-outs closed this year, explains why: back-office vendors are shared across every business line, and deal leads rarely focus...
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How to Build Trust and Leverage in M&A
"Never use the word 'trust me.' It's those people you can't trust." Jerry Cedicci, Kison Patel's boss from twenty years ago, built hundreds of millions of dollars in real estate, cafes, hotels, and restaurants. This is his playbook. For Jerry, trust is structural. Ask to run the business you're...
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The Man Who Taught Kison Patel to See M&A Opportunities
"At the closing table, I left with a check of $10 million." Jerry Cedicci bought a run-down Chicago hotel for $14 million and sold it for $24 million within a year. Jerry grew up in a French orphanage and arrived in the US in 1981 barely speaking English. Kison Patel hunted properties with Jerry...
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Why PE Rollups Fail the People Who Built the Business
A $100 million preferred equity check with a 15% compounding floor needs $200 million back in five years, and all of it sits ahead of the producers holding common equity. Bill Johnson grew Liberty to $250 million in revenue in seven and a half years without taking on any equity. He explains why...
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Why M&A Integration Fails Without Leadership Enablement
Kim Jones, HR Director of M&A One acquired CEO slowed his own deal by a month or two to lock down customer commitments and build relationships with buyer leadership. At announcement, employees clapped. Kim Jones has spent over a decade as an HR deal lead at large tech companies, from...
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The Seller's Power Shift: How to Defend Valuation After the LOI
Praveen Ghanta, Founder and CEO of DevHawk Twenty-four hours before diligence expired, the buyer's board came back and cut the offer by almost 50%. Praveen Ghanta bootstrapped HiddenLevers to over $8M ARR at 52% EBITDA and signed an LOI at 16x ARR. Then a $2M enterprise contract with TD slipped,...
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The Discount Is the Wrong Question in Private Equity Secondaries
Richard Chow, Partner at PJT Partners (NYSE: PJT) Everyone asks the same first question in a secondaries deal: what's the discount. Richard Chow, a partner at PJT Partners who has sat on every side of this market as an LP, a buyer, a portfolio manager at Abu Dhabi's sovereign wealth fund, and now...
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How to Finance Acquisitions Without Giving Up Equity
Bill Stone, Founder and CEO of SS&C How do you keep buying companies without eventually losing control of the company you built? SS&C Technologies founder and CEO Bill Stone has spent four decades avoiding exactly that. Rather than treating each acquisition as an isolated transaction, SS&C built…
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Where AI Actually Helps and Fails in M&A Legal Work
Aaron Binstock, Partner, Co-Head of Private Equity Practice at Cooley LLP Aaron walks Kison Patel through where AI earns its keep in M&A legal work. It drafts well on a single provision, struggles with a full 80-page markup, catches defined-term errors, and benchmarks a repeat client's past…
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The Back-Office Surprises Nobody Warned You About When Going Global
Jennifer Lipschultz, Sr. Director Merger & Acquisition Integration and Corporate Project Management Due diligence said the target's employees were fluent in English. Six months after close, Jennifer Lipschultz was approving funding for business English classes. Lipschultz, Senior Director of M&A...
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How to Structure an Acquihire Deal in the AI Talent Race
Derek Liu, M&A Partner at Baker McKenzie Acquihires used to be priced at roughly a million dollars per engineer. Now buyers pay hundreds of millions, sometimes billions, for a team, and the old deal structures can't carry that weight. Derek Liu, M&A Partner at Baker McKenzie, explains why tax...
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What Buyers Want from Bankers and Founders
Andrew Morbitzer, VP of Corporate Development, Life360 (ASX: 360) Inbound deals have an "infinitesimally small chance" of landing on a buyer's shortlist of two or three targets. Andrew Morbitzer led more than $2 billion in acquisitions at Intuit and GoDaddy, worked the sell side as an advisor…
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220 Deals. One Playbook. How to Scale M&A Without Losing Control
Shawn Rodricks, Head of M&A - Independent Consultant "I can be the best corp dev individual in the world. I get my integrations wrong, I've lost the transaction." Shawn Rodricks learned that in year one at Amerivet Veterinary Partners, when he rushed integration on a late deal, left the banking...
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How to Build a Deal Model That Beats PE on Price
Jeremy Segal, Executive Vice President of Corporate Development, Progress (NASDAQ: PRGS) Progress beat several reputable PE firms for Chef without paying more. The edge was a cost model PE couldn't copy: Chef's expensive engineers moved to Progress's Bangalore center of excellence, and its field...
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The People You Lose in M&A: Key Talent Retention Before Close
Haseeb Jawad, VP and Head of Corporate Development, Commvault (NASDAQ: CVLT) Most acquirers build retention around the bonus. Haseeb Jawad puts money third. His order is heart, brain, then pocket: win people through your actions from Day 1, convince them with a better-together story you actually...
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How to Buy Companies That Aren't Profitable Yet
Matt Arsenault, VP of Corporate Development & Strategic Alliances at Jamf "A $25 million M&A deal today can be just as valuable to a founding team as a $125 million deal three years from now." Matt Arsenault has run that math with enough founders to know it changes deals. Matt walks Kison through...
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When Deals Get Weird: Stories You Don't See in the CIM
Nathan Rust, Lutz Lehmann, Troy Pospisil, Jeremy Segal, Patrick Mumman, Tej Brahmbhatt, George Helock, and Angie Astle Eight deal professionals share the M&A moments that never make the CIM. A birthday cake in a management presentation that confirmed a culture fit and influenced a bid. A buyer…
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The Real Work Behind the Close: When Judgment Beats the Checklist
Brent Baxter, Sam Delestienne, Steve Hoffman, John Strenger, and Matt Melsen Winning a banker-run auction at 5% under the highest bid. Closing a deal when co-sellers have not spoken in months. Getting through 22 countries of employment complexity with a client who refused to work with EOR...
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The Nordic Compounder Playbook: How Jörgen Wigh Runs 85 Companies With 22 HQ Staff and No Integration
Jörgen Wigh, CEO of Lagercrantz Group Lagercrantz Group has completed 90+ acquisitions over 20 years and never sold one. CEO Jörgen Wigh runs 85 niche B2B companies under a 22-person headquarters with no integration, no exits, and no value realization targets. This is Part 2 of 2. Part 1 covers…
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The Nordic Compounder Playbook: How Lagercrantz Bought 90 Companies and Never Sold One
Jörgen Wigh, CEO of Lagercrantz Group Jörgen Wigh has been CEO of Lagercrantz Group (STO: LAGR-B) for over 20 years. In that time he completed 90+ acquisitions, built a portfolio of 85 niche B2B companies, and delivered 15 consecutive years of record earnings per share. No capital raises. No…
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M&A Integration Technology: What Actually Works
Jim Buckley, VP M&A Integration at Coursera | Todd Manley, VP of Corp Dev Integration at Intel | Carey Pugh is Sr. Director, M&A Corporate Integration at Ansys | Mahesh Ganesan, Sr. Director, M&A Integration at UKG Four integration leaders from Intel, Coursera, Ansys, and UKG debate what...
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Partner Before You Buy: The Pre-Acquisition Strategy Corp Dev Teams Skip
Tomer Stavitsky is SVP and Chief Corporate Development Officer at Omnicell (NASDAQ: OMCL) Corp dev teams treat M&A and partnerships as separate tracks, but Tomer Stavitsky looks at them holistically. In this episode, he breaks down the partner-first approach: an acquisition framework for…
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How M&A Turns a Chemical Company Into a Tech Business
Chandradev Mehta, SVP Strategy and Business Development at Hexion Inc. Chandradev Mehta, SVP Strategy and Business Development at Hexion Inc., breaks down how a commodity chemical company uses M&A to transform into a technology-enabled, chemistry-as-a-service business. He covers the acquisition…
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CPG Exit Strategy: How to Build a Consumer Brand Strategics Will Acquire | Keith Levy Part 2
Keith Levy, Operating Partner at Sonoma Brands Capital Most consumer brand founders think about exit as an event. Keith Levy thinks about it as a design requirement. In the second of two episodes, Keith walks through what exit-ready actually looks like in CPG: the revenue and EBITDA thresholds…
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CPG Due Diligence: The Operator Framework Behind a $1B Exit | Keith Levy Part 1
Keith Levy, Operating Partner at Sonoma Brands Capital Keith Levy backed an exit of just under $1B and a $400M exit using the same five-pillar framework, and he starts with the founder every time. Finance comes last. As Operating Partner at Sonoma Brands Capital, Keith has spent six years...
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400 Acquisitions and a Failed Process: What Happens When You Don't Integrate
Matt James, EVP, CFO & Chief Acquisition Officer at Oakbridge Insurance Roll-up platforms that skipped real integration are getting exposed when they go to market. Buyers want proof of organic growth, clean data, and a platform that actually functions as one. A lot of processes are breaking down...
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M&A Roll-Up Playbook: The IRR Framework That Replaced Budgets at Zayo | Dan Caruso (Part 2)
Dan Caruso, Managing Director, Caruso Ventures; Founding CEO of Zayo Group This is Part 2 of our conversation with Dan Caruso, founder and former CEO of Zayo Group. Be sure to start with Part 1. It covers the Zayo thesis, deal sourcing, structure, and the negotiation playbook, whereas this…
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M&A Roll-Up Playbook: How Zayo Did 45 Acquisitions and Sold for $14B | Dan Caruso (Part 1)
Dan Caruso, Managing Director, Caruso Ventures; Founding CEO of Zayo Group Dan Caruso built Zayo from a startup into a $14B+ bandwidth infrastructure platform through 45 acquisitions. In Part 1, he walks through the full buyer-led playbook: how the thesis was built on a contrarian bet that…
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Cross-Border M&A: Doing Deals in Latin America
Rodrigo Dominguez Sotomayor, Partner at White & Case LLP Most US buyers approach Latin America M&A the same way they do a domestic deal — optimize the process, close fast, move on. That approach gets deals killed. Rodrigo Dominguez Sotomayor, Partner at White & Case LLP, has spent 25 years…
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Partnering Before Purchasing: How Booz Allen Wins Proprietary Deals Early
Chrissy Cox, VP & Head of Corporate Development, Booz Allen Hamilton Booz Allen Hamilton didn't build one of the most active acquisition programs in federal tech by waiting for banker inbounds. They built it by showing up years before anyone else. Chrissy Cox has built Booz Allen's corporate...
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Cultural Fit Over EBITDA: How Salas O'Brien Built a 30-Merger Program Without a Single Failure
Nathan Rust, Senior VP of Corporate Development, Salas O'Brien Salas O'Brien has completed 30+ mergers with a 100% success rate and 93% cumulative leadership retention. That doesn't happen by accident. Nathan Rust, Senior VP of Corp Dev, explains the system behind those numbers. He shares how…
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Cross-Border M&A: How to Do Deals in Italy with Mauro Sambati and Donato Romano
Mauro Sambati, Partner – Gianni & Origoni Donato Romano, Partner – Gianni & Origoni Italy remains one of Europe's most attractive markets for foreign investment. But cross-border deals in Italy are shaped by regulatory scrutiny, strict labor laws, and unique cultural dynamics that many investors...
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Four Questions That Defined a $1 Billion Deal with Robert Lovegrove
President & CEO of The ChemQuest Group. Previously, as VP of Corporate Strategy at Milliken & Company When it comes to billion-dollar deals, success depends less on how much analysis is done and more on how clearly the organization aligns around what truly matters. In this episode of the M&A...
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Stop Falling in Love with the Deal: Guardrails for High-Volume Acquisitions with Birgitta and Lars Elfversson
Birgitta Elfversson, Non-executive director at Netlight Consulting AB Lars Elfversson, VP/Co-Founder, Netlight Consulting AB In fragmented industries, roll-ups are one of the most powerful strategies available. But high-volume acquisition programs come with hidden risks. Without discipline,...
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The Next Chapter After 400 Episodes
No guest today. No interview. Just Kison talking directly to you. After 400 episodes and nearly 100 founding members, Kison wanted to give you a real update - where M&A Science has been, what we're building, and where this is going. In this episode: Why episodes are moving to Thursdays How the...
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Integration Focused M&A: Why Execution Should Inform Strategy Before You Sign Part 2 with Ciprian Stan
Ciprian Stan, M&A Integration Manager at SALESIANER Gruppe Too many deals fail not because the strategy was wrong, but because execution realities surfaced too late. Ciprian Stan, M&A Integration Manager at SALESIANER Gruppe, is back for part 2. In this portion of the interview, he shares a...
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Integration Focused M&A: Why Execution Should Inform Strategy Before You Sign Part 1 with Ciprian Stan
Ciprian Stan, M&A Integration Manager at SALESIANER Gruppe Most M&A deals fail because integration was "something to figure out later". By the time execution realities, cultural risks, and people impacts surface, the deal is locked, and teams must work around untested assumptions. In this episode...
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How Experienced Buyers Actually Make M&A Work with Carlos Cesta
Carlos Cesta, Partner at Makanta Services M&A isn't just about closing deals, it's about making the deal actually work. Carlos Cesta, M&A advisor and founder of his own boutique advisory practice, spent 30 years on the buy-side at Verizon, Dentsu, Presidio, and NP Digital. He's worked 125+ deals...
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A Founder's Guide to Lean M&A Strategy with Christian Hassold
Christian Hassold, Senior Vice President of Corporate Development and Strategic Partnerships at Wpromote x Giant Spoon Christian has been on both sides of M&A as a serial founder and corporate development leader. In this episode, Christian shares his hard-earned lessons about culture as the...
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How Integration Debt, Cultural Friction, and Communication Failures Kill M&A Deals with Donara Jaghinyan
Donara Jaghinyan – Transformation and Integration Leader Donara Jaghinyan, returns for Part 2 of our conversation on what actually breaks integrations after the deal closes. This episode tackles the messy reality of post-merger execution: integration debt that piles up when long-tail items don't...
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Why Integrations Break: TSAs, Carve-Outs, and the Hidden Dependencies That Derail M&A Deals with Donara Jaghinyan
Donara Jaghinyan – Transformation and Integration Leader Donara joins us to pull back the curtain on why integrations break—and what it actually takes to make them work. With deep experience across healthcare, SaaS, professional services, and financial services in both public and PE-backed...
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Building Your M&A Reputation: Why Relationships Beat Transactions Every Time with Andrew Cohen
Andy Cohen, Vice President of Corporate Development at F5 Andy has built a career that proves M&A is fundamentally about relationships, not just transactions. With 30 years of experience and 60 deals closed across high-growth tech companies including Citrix, Acquia, and F5, Andy has cultivated…
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My Daughter Interviews Me About M&A | Holiday Special Episode with Shyla Patel
In this special father-daughter episode, My daughter interviews me on my new book on Buyer-Led M&A™. We break down the framework built from over 400 practitioner interviews—covering why traditional M&A is flawed, how to shift from reactive auction-chasing to proactive deal sourcing, and why...
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How to Score Culture Fit in M&A with Sharon Van Zeeland
Sharon Van Zeeland, Vice President of Strategy and Corporate Development at Rockwell Automation Sharon brings a unique engineer's perspective to the softest parts of M&A. In this episode, Sharon reveals how Rockwell developed a systematic scoring system for evaluating culture fit during due...
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Making M&A Boring (And Why That's a Good Thing) with Leon Brujis
Leon Brujis, Partner and Co-Head of U.S. at 65 Equity Partners Leon Brujis shares how his firm is redefining private equity through non-control investments in founder-led businesses. In this conversation, Leon breaks down why the best companies are never for sale, how immigrant adaptability...
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Integration Starts with Hiring, Not the Deal with Brandon Batt
Brandon Batt – Chief People and Transformation Officer at Quadient Brandon Batt joins us to discuss how successful M&A integration starts long before you sign an LOI. Brandon shares how Quadient built M&A capability across the organization through strategic hiring, created a transformation office...
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Strategic M&A Framework: IFS's Acquisition Playbook with Rachel Hindley
Rachel Hindley, Vice President of Corporate Development, IFS Rachel oversees transformative acquisitions for the global leader in industrial AI and enterprise software. In this episode, Rachel shares how IFS navigates the unique dynamics of having three major private equity backers—EQT, HG, and…
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Mastering Carve-Out Transactions with Keith Crawford
Keith Crawford, Global Head of Corporate Development and M&A at State Street Corporation Keith Crawford, Global Head of Corporate Development and M&A at State Street Corporation, brings over 20 years of expertise executing some of the most intricate custody business carve-outs in financial...
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Integration-Led M&A: Cisco's Approach to Deal Success Part 2 with Johanna Jaakola and Tesia Hostetler
Johanna Jaakola – Integration Lead, Corporate Development Integration Team, Cisco Tesia Hostetler – Leader, Acquisition Integration Practice, Cisco Johanna Jaakola, Integration Lead on Cisco's Corporate Development Integration Team, and Tesia Hostetler, Leader of Cisco's Acquisition Integration...
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
M&A Science, hosted by Kison Patel (Founder & CEO of DealRoom), is your go-to podcast for mastering the art of mergers and acquisitions. Each week, Kison and his expert guests from leading brands like Xerox, FastLap, and Cisco dig deep into real-world M&A strategies, offering actionable insights to optimize your M&A practice.Whether you're an experienced practitioner or new to the field, M&A Science provides practical advice on key topics like sourcing, due diligence, integration, divestitures, and more. With over 300 episodes, this podcast is the premier thought leadership resource designed to streamline your deal-making process.Start listening today and visit mascience.com/podcast to access over 300 episodes. Brought to you by DealRoom, the leading M&A optimization platform used by the best M&A teams around the world
HOSTED BY
Kison Patel
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does M&A Science have?
M&A Science currently has 436 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is M&A Science about?
M&A Science, hosted by Kison Patel (Founder & CEO of DealRoom), is your go-to podcast for mastering the art of mergers and acquisitions. Each week, Kison and his expert guests from leading brands like Xerox, FastLap, and Cisco dig deep into real-world M&A strategies, offering actionable insights to...
How often does M&A Science release new episodes?
M&A Science publishes regularly with 436 episodes available. Check the episode list for the typical release schedule.
Where can I listen to M&A Science?
You can listen to M&A Science on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts M&A Science?
M&A Science is created and hosted by Kison Patel.
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