German M&A Advisory in the Digital Age

In partnership with FINANCE Think Tank Corporate Banking & Finance

Question: Does digitalization change the work of M&A advisors? Answer: It doesn’t change the nature of consulting, but it can effectively support advisors in individual aspects of their work. But how? Eighteen M&A thought leaders from Germany discussed this very question at a recent roundtable discussion, hosted by the German FINANCE Think Tank in partnership with Datasite.

Enhancements and advancements
Although digitalization may not be fundamentally changing M&A advisory work, digital applications are enhancing the various phases of it, including buyer outreach, mandate acquisition, long list formation, due diligence and deal signing. The experts agreed:

• The main task of M&A advisors is to create a market around a company and to enable a deal to be closed at a good price. Digital M&A tools can support them in certain areas, for example in research work and client acquisition. But they do not replace any of their core services.
• In the data room, learning tools can replace more and more manual work from the M&A team, for example through automated redaction. More complex topics, however, must still be processed by the advisor, even in virtual data rooms.
  
• Due diligence can provide the buyer with previously unknown added value. Although the digitalization of data does not necessarily speed up the review process, it enables better risk assessment through intelligent digital data analysis combined with human expertise.
  

The main digital lever for the company's own added value lies in its internal processes. Both in the acquisition of mandates and in the execution of M&A processes, the use of digital tools – especially of CRM systems and cloud applications – can streamline the internal work very effectively.