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Mergers & Acquisitions

Tax & Legal support throughout the deal lifecycle

Deloitte offers differentiated solutions to help companies identify M&A opportunities, assess risks and exposures, understand the tax synergies that can be captured in transactions, and deploy offensive and defensive M&A strategies to navigate uncertainty and rebuild profitability. With a potentially busy transactional period ahead, companies will need support in several different areas throughout the deal lifecycle.

Interested in understanding the potential impact of the market on your transaction strategy?

The global economic impact of COVID-19 has fundamentally reshaped how companies do business, and it is inevitable that the deal making environment will also significantly change. Many companies are looking to M&A as a catalyst to transform and digitise their business models, strengthen their supply chain and increase access to data, customers and markets. Beyond traditional M&A, today companies need to deploy a wide range of inorganic growth strategies such as partnerships with their peers, co-investments with private equity, investment in disruptive technologies, cross-sector alliances with specialists and partnership with government to thrive.

Deal strategies in a complex climate

As organisations try to reshape their business, raise capital and drive competitive advantage, deals will remain an important part of the recovery equation. A combination of defensive and offensive M&A strategies should emerge as companies strive to drive transformation amid the current climate.

M&A to salvage value. Companies that have been severely impacted by the crisis and are in a financially vulnerable position, will need to take decisive measures to secure their survival. Some will turn to portfolio optimisation to identify assets that lack strategic fit and could be divested. Others will take radical actions including distressed asset sales to salvage value from loss-generating divisions.

M&A to safeguard markets to maintain competitive parity. Companies where the impact has been less severe, will need to build financial resilience by extracting deep synergies from recent deals. Many will consider alliances or co-investment opportunities to reduce risk and capital outlay in their core business.

M&A to transform business and safeguard the future. Companies with a strong balance sheet but expecting a significant degree of structural disruption to their sector would use M&A to safe-guard their customer base and supply chain. While others will explore acquisitions and alliances to close gaps in their portfolio and accelerate long-term transformation to their business models.

M&A to change the game. A select few resilient and strategically well-placed companies should use M&A and other investment activities to capture unassailable market leadership. It would require alliances that includes both large specialist partners as well as start-ups from the innovation ecosystem. They also need to use M&A to acquire disruptive companies at the edge of their existing businesses and use those as the springboard to launch new offerings that will shape their sectors in the future.

Deloitte advises businesses in determining strategic approaches to grow or rationalise their portfolio or take out costs to drive shareholder value. We focus on delivering value to clients throughout their journey and bring an industry perspective to transactions.

We work with financially challenged companies by analysing relevant tax issues and financial considerations, assisting in evaluating restructuring options, while building a framework allowing for future tax and operational efficiencies. Our professionals have extensive experience working with debtors, creditors and creditor committees with respect to both in–court and out-of-court restructurings. We also work closely with clients’ other professional advisors.

We can provide a full range of advice (strategy, finance, tax and legal) before, during and after a transaction, negating the need for separate advisors. Our international footprint provides global, regional and local expertise where the client deal is done.

If you would like to discuss any issues relating to a corporate transaction, please call your Deloitte partner.

Access our How COVID-19 has impacted global M&A activity article—View the article

Tax and legal support throughout the deal lifecycle

Deloitte offers differentiated solutions to help companies identify M&A opportunities, assess risks and exposures, understand the tax synergies that can be captured in transactions and deploy offensive and defensive M&A strategies to navigate uncertainty and rebuild profitability. With a potentially busy transactional period ahead, companies will need support in several different areas throughout the deal lifecycle.

Taxation of cross-border mergers and acquisitions

Analysis

Financier Worldwide discusses the taxation of cross-border mergers and acquisitions with Brian K. Pinto, Siobhan L. Godley and Lindsay Wietfeld at Deloitte