Ken Bond, Head of Corporate Development at Cetera Financial Group.

Most of the biggest M&A failures of all time are caused by culture clashes. Both companies cannot simply co-exist with each other, and instead of creating more value, they destroyed both of their businesses. This is why cultural due diligence is crucial in M&A. 

In this episode of the M&A Science Podcast, Ken Bond, Head of Corporate Development at Cetera Financial Group, shares his expertise on how to perform cultural due diligence to better understand the target company.

Things you will learn:

• The person responsible for cultural due diligence

• Executing cultural due diligence

• Using Playbooks

• Successful partnership between Corporate Development and Integration

• Advice for practitioners

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This episode is sponsored by the DealRoom

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Episode Bookmarks

00:00 Intro

05:11 Person responsible for cultural due diligence

05:54 Importance of cultural due diligence

08:08 Executing cultural due diligence

10:29 Killing the deal due to cultural conflict

14:54 Using Playbooks

17:31 Cultural due diligence during early conversations

20:12 Understanding how the target company makes decisions

22:40 Things to look for during due diligence

25:09 Using questionnaires for cultural due diligence

27:08 Bilateral deal vs. Auction process

30:10 Hardest part of cultural due diligence

32:27 Successful partnership between Corporate Development and Integration

35:33 Subculture due diligence

37:07 Advice for practitioners

38:31 Craziest thing in M&A