M&A transactions are always different because business situations are always specific. Still M&A transactions almost always start with a Teaser, continue with an Info Memo and end with a Sales and Purchase Agreement. Still process letters look alike, agreements have the same structure and content, people use the same word. So wouldn’it be interesting to isolate what is always the same and adds no value? If we do this why wouldn’t we formalize these standards and have an IT system support them?

This is what FAIR-M&A Standard Phase Structure (SPS) tries to achieve. FMA-SPS covers the entire extended M&A process, from the pre-deal surveillance of targets to the last post-deal actions, and suggests standards phases and sub-phases to organize team work and store information in the most efficient way. With formalized standards, members of the M&A teams have clear areas of responsibility and easy ways to get to all the information they need to perform their tasks.

FMA-SPS has been used to build the FAIR-M&A configuration of IBM’s M&A Accelerator solution. The combination of the standards and the IT system gives a collaborative management platform that has no equivalent in the world of M&A today. It allows M&A operators, whether from corporations, funds or advisories, to raise their efficiency to levels never seen before.