Practice 04
Post-Merger Integration
The deal closed, the plan exists on a slide, and nobody internally has the time or the scars to run it.
The practice most advisers don't have
The work
Anyone can hand you a verdict. We stay and merge the estate, and the people behind it.
This is the work we are built around. For repeat acquirers and larger groups, integration is where the deal is either delivered or quietly lost: Day 1 readiness, exit from transitional services, carve-out separation, platform consolidation, and the savings and gains the deal was actually priced on. We run it alongside management, with the people who wrote the diligence, and we bring interim leadership when there is no bench to do it.
Integration is where the deal delivers
Integration fails on people before it fails on platforms.
On paper it is integrated. Inside it is still Them and Us, and the people who hold the knowledge are the ones edging towards the door. That is why our integration work and our Kolbe people practice are one practice, not two: we map strengths, predict friction and design the structure that makes the thesis deliverable, then stay while it is delivered.
- Role fit tested where it matters: an entrepreneurial founder-CTO and a governed operator need different jobs
- Retention of the people who hold the knowledge, planned before the reorganisation, not after
- One team from the report through to exit, so nothing is relearned at handover
- See the People and Kolbe Practice for the assessment work behind it