MURPHY’S LAWS OF M&A

  1. No business plan will ride out reality: If you have calculated a best, a realistic and a worst case scenario, the worst case will be the best that can happen to you, usually it comes worse.
  2. Integration will eat resources, missing in the business.
  3. MIS kills start-ups.
  4. Whatever a seller promises to you about his availability for the company after disposal: there ain‘t no loyalty of freshly-baked millionaires.
  5. Business plans are often made to meet the price requirements of the seller, but afterwards they can‘t meet reality.
  6. Your price-offer will be always too low, your price expectation always too high.
  7. Exploding, emerging new markets often implode very soon.
  8. The best state-of-the-art innovative technology will be outdated shortly after acquisition.
  9. You never can buy excellent customer and supplier relations between good old pals, drinking beer and playing golf together.
  10. If the seller refuses a guarantee in the SPA, he knows why – you don’t.
  11. Whatever the seller tells you about giving his Life Work only into good hands, social responsibility against his staff and customers, … – it only will be the price, that counts at the very end.