An industrial group acquired its largest-ever bolt-on with a synergy case the street doubted. We ran diligence, Day-1, and the full 24-month value-capture program — and finance, not the program office, signed off the number.
The target's attraction was overlapping distribution, but the overlap was also the risk: two salesforces calling on the same customers with different pricing, and key account managers on both sides ready to leave rather than lose. Prior bolt-ons had declared victory at Day-100 and quietly leaked synergies for two years afterward.
Operational diligence priced the integration before signing — including retention packages the deal model had omitted. Post-close, the integration office ran a synergy ledger with every line owned by a named operator and audited quarterly by finance. Day-1 was deliberately boring: customers noticed nothing. The hard work — channel consolidation, plant rationalization, pricing harmonization — was sequenced across months four through twenty with the decision cadence to hold it.
“Every previous deal, the synergy number belonged to the integration office. This time it belonged to my ledger. That changed everything.”
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