For repeat buyers
You do not need another report. You need the programme to move.
Three questions decide whether you can recommend a firm internally: what it costs, how fast it moves, and what it is like to have them in the room. Here are our answers, before you have to ask for them.
How we price
A number you can take to your CFO.
We publish the model rather than a rate card, because the right fee depends on the deal in front of you. On a first call we scope it with you and you get the figure in writing.
Fixed fee, agreed before we start
You know the number up front. No hourly creep, no change note for the questions the deal was always going to raise.
Scoped to the deal, not to a template
A £4m bolt-on and a £120m platform do not need the same work. We size the scope against the deal and tell you what we are leaving out and why.
Integration costed at diligence
The cost models and timings attach to the size of the business during diligence, so the cost of the deal is known before signing rather than discovered after.
Programme pricing for a pipeline
Repeat buyers size the year with us in advance. We hold capacity against the pipeline instead of re-quoting every bolt-on from scratch.
Partner-level attention is the product. The people you meet on the first call are the people who write the report.
Turnaround
We move at the pace of your pipeline.
Diligence should never be the reason a deal slips. We size the work against your timetable, not ours, and we say on day one if the timetable is not credible.
We cap for quality: only three mergers simultaneously.
Short-burst dedicated resource
The most useful thing we do for repeat buyers is not a report. It is dropping a dedicated pair of hands into your team for a defined burst, to turn round work that has stalled and put the energy back into a programme that has run out of it. Your people keep ownership. We take the load.
Augmentation, not replacement
We sit inside the process rather than reporting into it. Your team stops noticing where we end and they begin, and the capability stays with them when we leave.
Answers the same day
Deals do not keep office hours. Same-day responses, and a partner on the end of the phone when something breaks at 9pm.
How the team works
Part of your team, not a wall to talk through.
When we asked our best clients why they kept coming back, none of them said the scope.
No wall between us
One team, one channel, no account manager relaying questions between people who could have spoken directly.
Ambassadors, not suppliers
We make each other look good. Your CEO sees rigour, and we earn the next deal because the last one worked.
Capability transferred, not hoarded
We teach your team how we run it, leave the templates behind, and expect to be needed less over time.
One firm across the whole job
Technology due diligence, integration, HR and P&C, organisational design and management training. No handoffs between advisers.
MergeOlogy
How we work together, agreed before we start.
We are Merger Synchronisation Builders, and this is how Builders work. MergeOlogy is the study of how two companies are blended: cultures, ways of working and people, agreed at the outset rather than discovered later. We do not offer a guarantee, because diligence is the art of finding things and we can only be responsible for the information we are given. What we can do is write down what each side owes the other.
What you get from us
- Never a cookie cutter. The work fits the deal in front of you.
- You will understand the report. Plain English, written for the most critical reader in the room, not for the file.
- An astute financial eye. Every finding carries a number, an owner and a date.
- We will challenge you to put enough money in the pot to realise the value, and show you the numbers behind it.
- The unfiltered truth, including the difficult decisions, always.
- Buy-and-build and bolt-on experience runs through the work, not technology alone.
- Named people do the work. The people you meet on the first call write the report.
- Opportunity as well as risk. We look for what the deal could be worth, not only what could go wrong.
What we ask of you
- Your investment thesis. If we do not know why you are buying, nobody knows what they are doing.
- Your investors' standards, and airtime with your investors.
- Access to capable people, not whoever happens to be free.
- Access to interrogate and train the target's management.
- Willingness to be challenged on how you operate internally.
- Openness to redesigning your own M&A process.
- Financial investment in the process, not only in the deal.
- Openness to the people work, including a willingness to fix your teams.
Not a supplier and not a subordinate. Both lists are read together on the first call, and either side can say no to one of them.
A typical engagement
What you get, and when.
Pipeline triage
Outside-in assessment on a prospect before expensive diligence. Structured, fast, enough to decide whether the deal deserves the spend.
Deal execution
Technology due diligence across the twelve scope areas, proportionate to the deal. You get a costed roadmap a non-technical board can act on, not a risk register.
Integration and value
Day 1 readiness, exit from transitional services, consolidation and the savings the deal was priced on, run by the people who wrote the diligence.
Most repeat buyers start at 02 on a live deal, then move backwards into triage and forwards into integration once they have seen how it runs. The full method is set out in the MERGE method, and once a deal is real it runs on MERGE: Map, Estimate, Realise, Go Live, Evolve.
Answered plainly
The things people say on the first call.
Never used a firm like ours before? Start here instead.
"You're smaller than the firms we normally use."
Deliberately. We cap for quality: only three mergers simultaneously. You get the people whose names are on the report, not a pyramid of juniors learning your sector at your cost.
"Our IT team can do this in house."
Often they could, if they were free. They are not, and they have to work with the target's team afterwards. We do the asking that damages a relationship and hand your team the answers.
"The last report we bought sat in a drawer."
Because it ended at signing. Ours carries into integration with the same people, so the findings become a plan with owners and dates rather than a PDF.
"Timing. We're not ready."
Then start with triage on one prospect. It is small, it is quick, and it tells you whether the pipeline is worth the programme before you commit to one.
Not for you if
You need a single commodity diligence report at the lowest price on the market. That is a real requirement and there are firms built for it. We are not one of them, and we will say so on the first call rather than after the proposal.
How does Beyond M&A price its work?
Fixed fees scoped to the deal, agreed before work starts, with no time-and-materials drift. Programme pricing is available where a pipeline of repeat acquisitions is running.
How fast can Beyond M&A move?
Structured to the pace of your pipeline, so diligence is not the reason a deal slips. Short-burst dedicated resource can be added to put energy back into a programme that has stalled.
What is it like to work with the team?
You get partner-level people inside the process rather than reporting into it, same-day responses, and someone on the end of the phone when something breaks outside office hours.
Who is Beyond M&A not right for?
Anyone who needs a single commodity diligence report at the lowest price on the market. That is a real requirement and there are firms built for it. We will say so on the first call rather than after the proposal.
Selected engagements
- IRIS Software Group (Hg)
- Civica (Blackstone)
- Citation Group (Hg)
- Equiniti
- Acacium Group
- Puma Growth Partners
- Blixt
- Mobeus Equity Partners
- DJH
Tell us what the pipeline looks like.
A 30-minute introduction. No pitch deck. We will scope and price it with you on the call.
Request an introduction