Mr. M&A meets Mr. M&A
- Shredding the NDA
Received an e-mail from my main contact who works in M&A asking if I was selling Who’s Who. He had seen a company for sale via another Mr. M&A which looked suspiciously like my business. It wasn’t, but if there was then we could buy the company, bolt it on and make one and one three.
So, yet another NDA to be signed. I deleted the section on “indemnities” and initialled by the side of the document. They also signed and e-mailed me the 20 page prospectus.
Some interesting points I noted;
- Read the NDA and remove parts you do not like, the other party will probably sign it anyway
- We went from a four line top line review of the company to a 20 page report. I could have made my decision with a four page overview highlighting some key facts and business sector. As it happens I now have access to 16 pages of confidential information that is of no use. To be fair, I made the same mistake when I wrote my 40 page business plan for Who’s Who and sent it out to potential investors. I would have got a much better response with a cut down version, the Executive Summary
- I made a quick decision on the acquisition. I speed read the document and focused on one point, the volume of traffic to the website. The majority of the traffic was outside the UK, my core market. The fit would not be good enough.
- Decision made, I replied declining my interest and destroyed all the paperwork. Having sold companies before, you would be surprised at how many people do not show the basic courteousy of replying.
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