M&A Science

Tens of thousands of Excel cells. That's what one target counted in the standard integration plan Ciprian Stan sent them, before asking if he expected them to fill in every one. He didn't. He expected them to cut 80 percent of it.

In part two of this conversation, Ciprian, M&A Integration Manager at SALESIANER Gruppe, makes the case for putting a preliminary integration plan inside the business case before signing, with milestones set for every workstream. He also covers when to build plans top-down versus bottom-up, why sellers often tell buyers what they think will close the deal, how an overlapping acquisition can wreck an earnout seller's trust, and why he doesn't trust AI with real power yet.

Ciprian's rule is simple: the integration plan exists before you sign, not on day one. DealRoom Integration lets your integration team plan from live diligence findings, then carries workstreams, owners, and synergy targets into Day 1. See how it works: click here.

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 of the M&A Science podcast, Ciprian Stan, M&A Integration Manager at SALESIANER Gruppe, explains that integration must be a strategic input to increase chances of success.

Things You'll Learn

• The importance of involving Integration early in the process
• Pre LOI preparations and expectations
• Cultural Diligence and what to look for
• How to communicate the deal the right way

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Want to know what 100+ deal professionals learned in 2025? The State of M&A 2026 Report by DealRoom breaks down the real challenges, trends, and priorities shaping M&A this year. Download your copy now: https://hubs.ly/Q03ZxRvD0

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[00:03:38] From Computer Science to M&A Integration – How an engineering background shaped Ciprian's integration mindset.

[00:07:41] First Exposure to M&A by Accident – Learning integration the hard way through a CBRE–Johnson Controls acquisition.

[00:10:18] Systems Thinking in Integration – Why no single workstream (IT, culture, ops) should dominate integration.

[00:13:54] Proactive vs. Reactive Buyers – How deliberate M&A strategy outperforms impulse and competitive-response deals.

[00:16:08] What "Good Strategy" Actually Looks Like – Using geographic and capability gaps to drive successful acquisitions.

[00:21:40] Why Integration Must Be Involved Early – How late involvement leads to unexecutable deal strategies.

[00:23:47] LOI Reality Check – Managing uncertainty, pricing flexibility, and risk before committing to a deal.

[00:33:19] Three Schools of Thought on Culture – Ignoring culture, adapting to it, or using it as a value-creation lever.

[00:43:53] The Case for Time Between Sign and Close – Why integration planning works best with a deliberate gap before closing.

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Questions, comments, concerns? Follow Kison Patel for behind-the-scenes insights on modern M&A.

"Inexperienced teams design structures to win negotiations. Experienced teams design structures to make the business work after the deal closes."

Carlos Cesta has worked on about 125 deals across Verizon, Dentsu, Presidio, and NP Digital. Here he lays out the deal spiral: deal structure, diligence findings, and integration strategy, three spokes you keep revisiting as you learn more. A forecast you don't trust becomes an earn-out, and that earn-out changes how fast you can integrate.

He also explains reverse diligence. Put the real post-close changes on the table before you close, like system migrations and org chart changes, and watch how the seller reacts. Plus his 70/30 earn-out starting point, and why he renegotiates early when targets will miss.

Carlos's six-month postmortems with sellers kept landing on one point: they wanted to see the integration plan. So his teams started running integration workstreams in parallel with diligence. DealRoom Integration is built for that. Integration planning starts during diligence, and each finding carries an owner and links to the integration task that resolves it. See how it works: click here.

Christian Hassold, Senior Vice President of Corporate Development and Strategic Partnerships at Wpromote x Giant Spoon

"A hundred opportunities in your funnel will likely only materialize one to two actionable opportunities." That's Christian Hassold's funnel math after building corporate development functions at ChannelAdvisor, CommerceIQ, Salsify, and Wpromote x Giant Spoon.

Christian walks Kison through his five-pillar lean M&A framework: deep dive the business, define and battle test the strategy, communicate it, run the funnel, and commit to close. His version of commit to close still has a stop list: dishonesty, fraud, or a culture that isn't a fit. Everything else gets cataloged and weighed as a pattern. He also shares how he flew to Atlanta to interview a failing competitor's employees before making his pitch, then sold the combined business to ChannelAdvisor.

Christian catalogs red flags as the deal runs and gives the integration team a front-row seat from the LOI. DealRoom Diligence is built for that workflow: every finding gets an owner and a mitigation plan, and the integration team can plan workstreams from live findings before close instead of from a handover deck. See how findings work: click here.

"A hundred opportunities in your funnel will likely only materialize one to two actionable opportunities." That's Christian Hassold's funnel math after building corporate development functions at ChannelAdvisor, CommerceIQ, Salsify, and Wpromote x Giant Spoon.

Christian walks Kison through his five-pillar lean M&A framework: deep dive the business, define and battle test the strategy, communicate it, run the funnel, and commit to close. His version of commit to close still has a stop list: dishonesty, fraud, or a culture that isn't a fit. Everything else gets cataloged and weighed as a pattern. He also shares how he flew to Atlanta to interview a failing competitor's employees before making his pitch, then sold the combined business to ChannelAdvisor.

Christian catalogs red flags as the deal runs and gives the integration team a front-row seat from the LOI. DealRoom Diligence is built for that workflow: every finding gets an owner and a mitigation plan, and the integration team can plan workstreams from live findings before close instead of from a handover deck. See how findings work: click here.

"Usually what happens with TSAs is lots of extensions where companies lose time and money." Donara Jaghinyan has run carve-outs, TSA exits, and integration management offices across healthcare, SaaS, and financial services. Her rule: treat every TSA as a project with a start, a scope, and a hard end date.

She walks through a deal where one buyer carved out two business units at once, with HR, finance, and technology TSAs that depended on each other. She also covers why you can't just promote a PM into an IMO role, why integration belongs at the table around LOI, and what day one controls, 30-day discovery, and steering committee governance look like in practice.

Donara points to the close as the moment where "most of the information gets lost" between the diligence team and the people running integration. DealRoom Integration keeps that handoff intact: diligence findings carry into integration worklists, and when the close date moves, every dependent task re-plans at once. See how it works: click here.

Andy Cohen, Vice President of Corporate Development at F5

Andy Cohen spends two to 10 hours researching a founder before the first call. After 30 years in M&A, he still treats that call as a sales call.

Andy runs corporate development at F5, and almost all of his deals are proactive. He explains how he screens a new space: 30 companies, cut to eight, with four approached first through cold LinkedIn notes, warm intros and old board connections. He covers why you can't know the company until you know the person, and why you can't convince somebody to sell who doesn't want to. He also explains how a dinner or a long walk turns up the culture cues that shape integration, and why "transactions and meetings are short and careers and reputations are long."

Andy's follow-up system is an Outlook reminder that says "call this person in three months," plus Google alerts on every target. DealRoom Pipeline keeps your targets, deal notes, contacts and deal emails in one place, with tasks and real-time notifications, so every "not now" has an owner and a next step. See how it works: click here.

Kison Patel mailed 300 letters to find his family's home. Six people wrote back. The house he bought came with no auction, no bidding war, and a verbal offer accepted the same day. That's proprietary deal sourcing, and it sits at the center of his new book, Buyer-Led M&A™.

In this special episode, his daughter Shyla takes the host chair and walks him through the framework he distilled from 400+ episodes of M&A Science. Kison breaks down the five pillars, the three coats of conviction that derail deals (reactive positioning, integration negligence, and the model mirage), and why the deal team should own how well a company integrates, not only whether it closes.

Kison's warning about integration teams arriving weeks before close, re-diligencing the deal, and planning just enough to survive Day 1 is the problem DealRoom Integration was built for. Integration tasks are created from live diligence findings in the same room, with owners and timelines tied to close. See how it works: click here.

Sharon Van Zeeland, Vice President of Strategy and Corporate Development at Rockwell Automation

Rockwell Automation scores the culture of acquisition targets on a zero-to-five scale. The scores come from a 50-item survey that takes about 20 minutes. Sharon Van Zeeland, an electrical engineer who became a corp dev leader, explains why those scores rarely kill a deal. They shape how Rockwell integrates it.

Sharon covers the three categories Rockwell watches most closely: adaptability, process consistency, and understanding of the mission. She also covers a third-party software license that diligence missed, which slowed a customer's drug development. And she explains the time-bound decision charts that keep integration from stalling. Then she shares how an exclusive hunting right, a company truck, and a Fourth of July parade sponsorship got stalled deals signed.

Sharon's team used to wait until close to bring in integration leaders. Then they spent time re-explaining the deal thesis and found things they had missed. DealRoom Integration lets your integration team plan from live diligence findings, with owners, dependencies, and timelines set before Day 1. See how it works: click here.

Leon Brujis, Partner and Co-Head of U.S. at 65 Equity Partners

Many of 65 Equity Partners' deals take a year to two years to come together, and Leon Brujis thinks that's the edge. His firm's saying: "The best companies are not for sale." The real diligence is watching a founder hit milestones long before any process starts.

Leon sits down with Kison in New York to break down partnership capital: non-control investments in founder-led businesses, underwriting the founder relationship before the company, and a pull-versus-push approach to value creation. He shares how 65 got to know Allied OMS and Kendra Scott, lays out the five things that decide a term sheet (value, structure, governance, value creation plan, exit), and explains why skipping diligence is the surest sign a market has peaked.

Leon's team tracks 15 to 30 companies it met last year and this year, waiting for the right moment to invest. DealRoom Pipeline keeps that kind of long-running pipeline in one place, with notes, contacts, captured emails, and tasks on every target. Save 10+ hrs a week with automated reporting. See how it works: click here.