What's difference between representing PE clients in M&A
Posted: Mon Jan 05, 2015 3:15 pm
transactions vs. strategic buyers? Any legal substantive differences?
Biggest 2 factors/differences in M&A, IMO, is (1) buy-side vs. sell-side and (2) public vs. private.
Buy-side deals are usually a lot more work in my experience, especially because you are inspecting every material part of the target company that the your client is buying, along with dealing with the financing of the transaction and also have to work on the company post-closing. Further, you are somewhat at the mercy of the target/target's counsel because they contain all the information that you want to know.
Private deals are often more work on the actual deal, both the transaction structure and the diligence/disclosure schedules (private deals can usually get more creative with the negotiations/structure and often times diligence is worse because public clients are more organized and have their bigger contracts/debt all publicly disclosed), but public company deals have a lot of filing/disclosure work with the SEC.