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

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M&A across three worlds: Large-cap, aggregators, private equity

Mergers and acquisitions absorb enormous amounts of capital and management attention, and most large deals still fail to deliver the value their architects promised. What separates the transactions that work from those that do not usually sits outside the valuation model: who is buying and why, what the buyer’s own economics demand, and how much of the promised value survives the years after closing.

Over this four-part series discover how leading organisations approach M&A, from executing public company transactions to building acquisition-led growth and creating value in private equity.

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 Finastra, 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 

Who Should Attend?

This event is suitable for portfolio managers, research analysts, and asset owners.

Find the other sessions in the series here:
M&A pathway: M&A primer and large-cap case study
M&A pathway: PE M&A - The sponsor’s logic 
M&A pathway: Panel discussion - M&A across three worlds

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