

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

When you approach a company or they approach you about an acquisition, who at the company is it?<p>Is it the product department, is it business development/corporate development, is it some executive, is it the tech team?<p>For the big acquiring companies specifically (like Google, Facebook, and Twitter) who would this be?
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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).

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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.

