M&A Mandates and Current Market Challenges

How are the most disciplined dealmakers navigating uncertainty and obstacles during critical points in the deal process?

Are there ways to protect deals against sudden economic, regulatory, or geopolitical events?

What are the current factors that may impede dealmakers from realizing value from transactions?

Are there emerging standards and best practices for disclosing corporate relationships and the rationale for a transaction?

Orla Muldoon, Vice President, Global Business Development and M&A, ADM
Sergio Letelier, Senior Vice President and Head of Corporate Development, Hewlett Packard Enterprise
Jason Baab, Vice President Corporate Development, Strategy & Sustainability, The Toro Company
Chair: Patrick Sykes, Managing Director and M&A Partner, BCG

Addressing Regulatory Resistance to Dealmaking

What is the current antitrust sentiment at the DoJ and FTC?

How are the new merger control guidelines and changes to the HSR process being addressed in practice?

How are previous acquisitions and market conditions being considered by the agencies?

Are there ways to head off labor market driven competition reviews?

Jenny Schwab, Managing Counsel – Antitrust & Global Competition, United Airlines
Kaj Rozga, Senior Antitrust Counsel, ABB
Derek Vander Heide, Associate General Counsel for Global Corporate Strategy, Business Development and Portfolio Management Portfolio Management, Whirlpool
Mary Lehner, Partner, Antitrust, Freshfields (Chair)

Executing Effective M&A Target Diligence

How are AI platforms being employed to improve acquisition assessments and test the feasibility of the deal thesis?

Can outside-in assessments, fieldwork, and third party analytics be used to speed the deal process and complement traditional target diligence?

What current market factors should be applied to the assessment of a target's base performance and growth prospects to support bid confidence?

What missteps should be avoided when calculating positive and negative synergies?

How will generative AI change M&A in 2024?

Saswat Bohidar, Associate General Counsel, Corporate Transactions Group, Hewlett Packard Enterprise
Dawn Bartholomew, Head of Corporate Development and Partner, L.E.K. Consulting
Liz Hepding, Senior Vice President, Strategy & Corporate Development, Ingersoll Rand
Chair: Seth Van Winkle, Managing Director and Head of the North American M&A Practice, Accenture

Creative Alternatives to Heading off Flight Risk

How are M&A teams evaluating creative alternatives to secure retention of the target's leadership, including equity rollovers, contingent consideration, and employment agreements with deferred compensation?

Where does the FTC's ban on non-compete agreements provide exceptions for M&A?

Is there a goodwill threshold?

Can entities be bound by non-competes?

How are non-disclosure agreements, non-solicitation agreements, and various IP agreements changing to provide de facto retention elements as non-competes lose their strength?


John Albright, Chief Legal & Compliance Officer, HUB International
Kevin G Griffin, Executive Director of Corporate Development, M&A, JLL
Tim Brennan, Associate General Counsel, Aon Corporation
Chair: Sean Skiffington, M&A Partner, A&O Shearman

Leadership Diligence to Inform Integration

How can deal teams uncover troubling undercurrents across the workplace, including deeply rooted norms and working styles?

What are the best ways to integrate management teams?

Do contingent consideration mechanisms create the right behaviors post-close?

Can you identify disruptive employees before closing?

Should dealmakers try to head off frustration and resentment over benefit inconsistencies, or leave that to the integration team?

How can you ensure retention is not an afterthought?

Are different approaches needed when acquiring a business from a financial sponsor with a large founder investment?

Sharon Van Zeeland, Vice President, Corporate Development, Rockwell Automation
Jillian Kaebel-Sisk, Global Mergers, Acquisitions, and Divestitures HR Director, Caterpillar
Sarah Johnson, Vice President, HR M&A, Hitachi Digital
Chair: Sarah Salomon, Principal, Global M&A Advisory Services, Mercer (Chair)

M&A Safe Harbor Diligence

How should the DoJ's new M&A Safe Harbor policy be incorporated into the diligence process?

What are the emerging foreign direct investment challenges that need to be avoided?

How can dealmakers navigate protectionist regulatory regimes to acquire national champions?

Are there ways to structure deals to address labor issues that make cross-border acquisitions more achievable?

What is required to perform proper FCPA and sanctions diligence?

Richard Buchband, Senior Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary, ManpowerGroup
David Oskandy, Deputy General Counsel International, M&A and Strategic Initiatives, CDW
Chris McVety, Vice President, M&A and Corporate Strategy and Associate General Counsel, Ingredion
Chair: William Jefferson Black, Executive Director, Transaction Advisors Institute

Divestiture Structures and Process Best Practices

How are the most effective corporate development teams preparing to execute divestitures?

Should the M&A team look for imbalances in the portfolio of business lines, or leave this to the CEO and the Board?

Are there insights from the wave of activist campaigns that are pushing for divestitures?

What is the key to running an intentional and well-considered separation?

Faiza Sabeen, Senior Vice President, Corporate Strategy and Development, Morningstar
Chirag Vyas, Senior Director Corporate Development, Treehouse Foods
Conor Douglass, Director, Mergers & Acquisitions, Kohler
Chair: Kate Bialorucki, Deals Partner, PwC

Closing Deal Terms and Risk Allocation

How are deal teams allocating risk among courter-parties and third-parties?

What are the relevant differences between holdbacks and other protections?

Are misperceptions -- or real market changes -- limiting the use of transaction insurance?

What fraud, non-reliance, and no-recourse provisions are shifting?

How do you make sure one party does not control a closing condition?

For long-close acquisitions, what terms should be structured to adjust?

How can outside dates, ticking fees, efforts, reverse break fees, equity grants, and other deal points be designed to work in concert?

Alison Rhoten, Vice President, Deputy General Counsel, Kimberly-Clark North America, Kimberly-Clark
Hugh Kinast, Assistant General Counsel, Sherwin-Williams
Kijsa Phillips, Deputy General Counsel, M&A & Venture Capital, Kraft Heinz
Chair: Paul Humphreys, Partner, Corporate and M&A, Freshfields

Engaging Institutional Investors and the Financial Media

When should M&A teams begin conditioning stakeholders around a transaction?

How are the most effective deal teams navigating a range of polarizing issues, engaging with policy influencers, and anticipating protectionist dynamics?

Are there clever ways to structure deals to absorb regulatory uncertainty, address labor impacts, aligning with institutional investors, and head-off activist sentiment?

What are the current best practices for M&A specific multidisciplinary communications?

Michael Louis, Vice President, M&A Strategy, BIC
Jakub Teply, General Counsel, Corporate Development, GE Aerospace
Kedric Meredith, Vice President, Corporate Development & Investor Relations, JBT Corporation
Chair: Pat Tucker, Senior Managing Director, Americas Head of M&A and Activism , FTI Consulting

Value Creation During Integration

What’s the optimal level of engagement with the target in developing the integration thesis?

How do you enhance visibility on sources of value across revenue, costs, talent, and technology?

What positive and negative synergies are often missed in deal models and discovered during integration?

How do you uncover unrealistic integration costs and timing?

What fault lines need to be tackled before divisions become too great?

Are there fundamental best practices that have stood the test of time, or, is each deal unique?

Are there varied approaches for synergy sequencing?

Scott Maier, Senior Vice President, Enterprise Applications and M&A Integration, HUB International
Essa Cooper, Director of Corporate Development Integration, Qualcomm
Jason Rothstein, Head of Mergers and Acquisitions Integration, Netflix
Chair: Chris Evans, M&A Faculty, Transaction Advisors Institute - former Head of Corporate Development Integration, Amazon