3 ms·
Lawyers/bankers/third-parties people can and do very frequently kill deals. Do not hand the discussions off to them. Yes, in some cases a third party negotiator
by staunch 16y ago
Lawyers/bankers/third-parties people can and do very frequently kill deals. Do not hand the discussions off to them. Yes, in some cases a third party negotiator can help a lot. In this case though it's probably too likely they'd piss off the buyer and make them walk.
Just tell the buyer you want a deal that you won't regret, and what that means. It's really that simple. Once you get to the point where you're happy stop pushing for more unless you're truly okay with the buyer walking away.
- jacquesm 16y agoThey'll need a lawyer backing them up just to make sure they don't sign something really stupid. No way should they proceed without legal backup. Agreed on the bankers, they can and do kill deals, I've seen that happen up close. Oh, and they did get paid.
- staunch 16y agoAbsolutely get a lawyer and/or banker involved on your side, just be there to control all their interactions with the other side.
- gfodor 16y agoI don't have any experience involving bankers in a M&A deal but it's important that you monitor the work your lawyer(s) are doing pretty closely. Even good lawyers will have a tendency to want to refine the contract past the point of diminishing returns or go off and do random tasks in order to pad their hourly fees. You can potentially get them to agree to a fee cap for the deal, but unless there's other reasons for them to want to do a thorough job (like future business with your acquirer, etc.) it'll probably do more harm than good. All that said, you'd be absolutely mad to not have good lawyers on a deal like this. All it takes is one booby trap in your contract for all your hard work to get flushed down the toilet.