Selling a business can be a simultaneously exciting and stressful time, so it’s important for business owners to have partners who know how to navigate the M&A landscape. Specifically, owners should look for partners who understand:
- The time, process and intensity it takes to get your business ready for an acquisition
- How to manage your balance sheet, control costs, and evaluate low-performing products and services
- Organization from the business side, including full service lending, treasury management, exit strategy, liquidity and retirement aspects
It’s also key to remember that from a personal investment standpoint, money and emotion go hand-in-hand. As such, it’s critical to have someone who can take some of the emotion out of investing to help you navigate your options.
Tom Lally, UMB senior vice president and commercial team lead in St. Louis, works with a team of experts in the world of M&A, and recently spoke on a panel about M&A activity. In addition to explaining UMB’s approach of focusing on hard add-backs, real data and historical trends when it comes to analyzing deals as well as the personalized experience UMB delivers to clients involved in M&A activity, he talked about overall industry trends, including:
- There are several financial players chasing a limited amount of opportunities
- Commercial banks, once hesitant to enter into the private equity space, are increasingly looking to complete transactions as loan growth competition heats up
- Insurance companies remaining active and bringing a pricing and term prowess
Read the full summary of the conversation between Tom and other panelists here‡.
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