As a business owner, you can’t afford to ignore the explosion of dealmaking activity around you. Even if you aren’t actively looking to buy a company or sell your business, you can’t sit idly by.
Why? Because there are trillions of dollars of capital looking for a home. And if you aren’t tapping into some of that money, your competitors are. They are buying scale, scooping up new technologies, diversifying into new markets and implementing long-term strategies to build more valuable businesses.
The bottom line is dealmaking remains the best way to transform your business, says EY’s latest Global Capital Confidence Barometer.
“Despite geopolitical fears or the shadow of a slowdown, companies are clearly looking to M&A to navigate current and potential barriers to growth,” the report states. “Indeed, dealmaking is often the fastest route to build the optionality that companies need to proactively respond to evolving challenges. As with the current global economic expansion, this M&A upcycle has lasted far longer than normal cycles, and longer than many predicted. The main reason is that the speed with which companies need to transform their portfolios can, in many cases, not be done without M&A.”
While deals like The Walt Disney Co.’s $71 billion acquisition of Twenty-First Century Fox last March tend to grab the headlines, transactions are getting done across all sectors, including the middle market. It’s up to you to identify the right move for your company and then develop a strategy to make it happen. Big or small, the goal remains the same: To position your company to be a leader in its industry, as well as competitive in your market.
The important role that strategic growth initiatives play in today’s business environment paved the way for Smart Business Dealmakers, a weekly digital newsletter that is now in six cities and continuing to expand. The goal for this publication is to help connect the dots for business owners, providing useful insights and lessons learned that can help inform their dealmaking decisions. If you haven’t already, I encourage you to sign up for the newsletter in your market at www.smartbusinessdealmakers.com.
You simply can’t afford to wait for opportunities to come to you. Study your competition, talk to people who have made deals and work with your team to find the best path forward for your company. There’s no time to waste.
“The world is changing very fast,” says media mogul Rupert Murdoch. “Big will not beat small anymore. It will be the fast beating the slow.”
Fred Koury is president and CEO at Smart Business Network
