We Belong Together

We Belong Together

The application window for the 2025 M&A Best Practices Award, part of our Excellence in Acquisitive Growth Awards Series, is open until midnight on Friday, May 9. Award applicants describe a process, initiative, technique, or strategy used in their deal-making or integration processes that they consider worthy of recognition as an industry “best practice”—one that could be emulated by other acquirers aiming to achieve better results for the acquirer, the seller, and ultimately their (now shared) clients. (Click here to submit your best practice.) 

• It takes two to tango: As in past years, many of the 2025 submissions describe best practices as they pertain to integration of acquisitions. Anyone who has been through an acquisition—either as a buyer or a seller—is acutely aware that “integration” is either where the magic happens or where the phrase “sunk cost” becomes a bitter refrain. We want 100% of the former, and we want to banish the latter. 
• The promised land: When integration is done right, the positive impacts for the combined business are remarkable. Just look at the results on post-transaction, first-year-of-integration performance from our Excellence in Acquisitive Growth Awards initiative. Skilled integrators report a median increase in profits of 78% one year into integration. They point to a median uptick in backlog of 28%. They see a median boost in revenues of 22%. And—importantly in this era of hard-to-find, hard-to-keep talent—the best integrators have been driving down the voluntary turnover rates of their acquisitions by almost one-fifth a year into their transactions…Read more