M&A pathway: M&A as a growth engine - Lessons from serial acquirers and strategic buyers

Tuesday 29 September 2026 | 13:00 - 14:00 | Webinar

M&A Across Three Worlds: Large-Cap, Aggregators, Private Equity

M&A consumes huge amounts of capital and management attention, yet many deals fail to deliver value. This four-part series explores what drives successful acquisitions across large-cap corporates, serial acquirers and private equity investors.

Each session is led by an experienced practitioner and built around a real transaction: the Sky takeover battle, acquisitions within a high-growth software company, and the 2005 Hertz buyout.

Participants will:

• Understand what drives M&A and why many deals fail
• Examine how different buyer economics shape pricing, strategy and returns
• Analyse landmark transactions from deal execution through to integration and exit

This session

Not all acquisitive companies follow the same playbook: some pursue occasional transformational transactions, while others treat M&A as a repeatable growth engine, running a standing pipeline of acquisitions to extend products, capabilities, geographies and customer reach. This session sets out how acquisitive companies — strategic buyers, serial acquirers and aggregators alike — identify targets, test opportunities, finance transactions and create value after closing, and why the discipline that makes an acquisition programme repeatable is harder to build than any single deal. 

In this webinar, Andrea Lisi, Corporate Development Director at a high-growth software business, grounds that framework in his own experience of executing and integrating acquisitions, showing where value is won or lost between signing and integration, and which pitfalls most often catch companies pursuing growth through M&A. 

Learning outcomes:  

• Understand how strategic buyers and serial acquirers use M&A to accelerate growth
• Analyse what drives value creation beyond the deal announcement
• Evaluate approaches to valuation, pricing discipline and synergy capture
• Apply the practices that make an M&A capability scalable and repeatable 

Speaker

Andrea Lisi, Director Corporate Development team, Finastra 

Andrea Lisi is a Director in the Corporate Development team at Finastra, a leading provider of financial software solutions. His expertise spans the full M&A lifecycle, including acquisitions, divestitures, valuation, deal structuring, due diligence, and value creation, with a particular focus on software, fintech, and financial services businesses.  

Prior to Finastra, Andrea was a strategy consultant at Boston Consulting Group and Oliver Wyman, where he advised leading financial institutions and private equity investors on M&A, growth strategy, commercial due diligence, and large-scale transformation programs. He also co-founded a health-tech startup and gained private equity experience through roles with UK-based investment firms during his MBA. Andrea holds a BSc and MSc in economics from Bocconi University and an MBA from London Business School. 

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