Deal Leader Glen Mallaby provides an insight into how skilled and experienced deal management prevented inexperienced legal representatives potentially causing the breakdown of a sale.
“Our client, a manufacturer and service agent, chose to use their own lawyer for the final stage of their sale process (against our advice) whilst the acquirer selected a friend with ‘corporate’ experience. The communications between the lawyers could at best be described as poor and this contributed to a protracted due diligence process that seemed to be meandering towards failure. Additionally, the unnecessarily lengthy legal process was beginning to cause legal costs to spiral out of control.
To avoid the deal failing at such a late stage we called a meeting between the acquirer and the vendor (excluding lawyers) with the express intention of working through a long list of outstanding issues, most raised by the lawyers. During a three hour meeting the vendor and acquirer agreed all the outstanding issues, none of which they regarded as constituting an impasse, and finished the meeting by instructing their lawyers to complete the deal.
Although our clients and acquirers are entitled to use their own legal representatives, unless they have experience in company sale/acquisitions it invariably guarantees that the legal process will become protracted - at worst this can cause the breakdown of the entire deal.”
