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Ask HN: Which group of people generally make acquisitions at a company?

4 points by brang ↗ HN
When you approach a company or they approach you about an acquisition, who at the company is it?

Is it the product department, is it business development/corporate development, is it some executive, is it the tech team?

For the big acquiring companies specifically (like Google, Facebook, and Twitter) who would this be?

2 comments

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niketdesai
Generally at a larger company with a more defined process the people that make acquisitions will be at least a piece of the corporate development team along with a product head.

It seems like a person, or group, inside the company becomes aware of a target and advocates for the acquisition of that target. The product group might then make first contact to explore the opportunity of acquisition (confirming interest) and hand off to the corp dev team to complete the transaction while keeping an eye on the whole thing.

jamespetersonau
Larger firms (ie. those you want to be acquired by ;]) will have a focused corporate finance team whose sole role is to seek out growth through M&A.

This M&A team does all the number crunching to make sure that they're adding value to the firm when they do deals. M&A also seek out the deals. They may do this directly (i.e. a team of research analysts within M&A) or indirectly (i.e. 'feelers' throughout the firm who have incentives to forward possible deals).

My suggestion is that you identify which firm/s you would offer the biggest value to (i.e. the greatest synergy), and contact their M&A team directly (even if it's a distant deal).