Navigating High-Stakes M&A: Strategies for Success in Complex Deals
Navigate complex M&A deals successfully with strategic planning and execution. Address tariffs, market volatility, and uncertainty to capture value and seize opportunities.
Why you need a new playbook for tackling complex M&A
Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are a challenging act even under the best conditions, and growing complexity adds to their risk. As the M&A landscape evolves, senior executives must adapt to new challenges and opportunities.
It’s not your imagination. M&A is getting more complex.
Tariffs, volatile markets, and geopolitical and economic uncertainty have all added layers of complexity to M&A. Furthermore, deals have generally become more expensive, meaning the margin for error on value capture—both in terms of synergies and speed to value—is now very slim. This shrinking margin for error and limited timeframe make even seemingly simple deals more complex to get right. The degree of difficulty in the deals themselves makes careful planning and precise execution essential for success.
Complexity in Deals: In a 2024 KPMG M&A survey, 100 percent of executives said deals had become more complex over the past three years.
What makes a deal ‘complex’?
Increasingly, companies are using M&A to acquire new capabilities like technology or entirely new businesses, changing their strategy and operating models in the process. Others are using carve-outs, spin-offs, and bolt-on deals to shed non-core assets or upgrade in key markets and geographies.
What makes a deal 'complex' is its intricacy in several key areas. Higher degrees of difficulty across multiple dimensions tend to compound execution risk:
Is the deal a simple commercial add-on to your existing business or a wholesale overhaul for the enterprise? The more changes it requires to your operating and business models, the higher the complexity.
Is the deal mainly about cost takeouts or will it affect a meaningful portion of your revenue? Deals representing revenue synergies of 25 percent or more in Year 2 tend to be the most challenging.
Are you making a single purchase or does the deal involve multiple concurrent acquisitions and divestitures? The more steps, the greater the task in sequencing, separating, and integrating.
Will integration happen in a few countries where you already operate or across many where you don’t? Those deals where the acquirer must integrate in 10 or more countries where it is partially or not present are the most difficult.
Complex Deals, Big Wins: The Value Proposition
The payoff for navigating the intricacies of M&A can be substantial. KPMG research indicates a significant return advantage for those mastering complex deals. Looking at white space acquisitions from a sample of deals, we found their average performance was 40 percentage points higher than that of noncomplex deals on a three-year post deal-close time horizon.
What could go wrong? Anticipating Risks in Complex M&A Deals
Key considerations for dealmakers include:
- Innovation: New capabilities, products/services, or businesses that change strategy and operating models require a tailored approach to value visioning, diligence, and modeling. They also require more intense scenario planning on downside risk.
- Valuation: Higher deal valuations require buyers to stretch value creation beyond cost savings, pressuring them to quickly prove the deal’s value.
- Regulators: Shedding assets in a large deal to win regulatory approval slows down transactions and complicates the deal process.
- Countries: Cultural, regulatory, and legal challenges can roil cross-border deals as can the lack of expertise in international tax, export controls, and sanctions.
- Speed: Completing due diligence swiftly, accelerating value realization, and executing efficiently to minimize internal challenges.
Strengthen your deal fundamentals to achieve M&A success in partnership with KPMG
KPMG helps enterprise leaders move at deal speed without compromising performance—faster, cleaner, and with fewer surprises. Whether you’re acquiring, divesting, or restructuring, our wide-ranging M&A capabilities can deliver results where it matters most.
Our tech-enabled deal teams are purpose-built for the seamless orchestration of value. Our deal architect model provides you with a single point of accountability, synthesizing insights, and mobilizing the breadth and depth of our functional and industry experience. KPMG teams are focused on the value drivers underpinning your investment thesis, helping to reduce value leakage, accelerating value creation, and creating continuity from pre-deal to post-deal phases.
Elevate your strategy and execution
Our support spans integration and separation, commercial due diligence, and GTM alignment to help deliver results beyond Day 1.
Accelerate financial performance and value realization
We build KPI dashboards, monitor synergy capture, and generate transparent reporting to boards, investors, and internal teams—turning assumptions into measurable outcomes.
Empower your people, culture, and risk management
From leadership alignment to compliance readiness, we help you integrate people and purpose. Our services span change management, organizational design, and cross-border regulatory navigation.
Transform your digital and tech capabilities
Through connected enterprise frameworks and digital lighthouse capabilities, we unify tech stacks, accelerate cloud migration, and optimize architecture to power future-ready operations.
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Navigating the complexities of today’s M&A landscape requires a new playbook. With our deep expertise and strategic insights, C-level executives can confidently tackle high-stakes deals, driving both immediate success and long-term value.
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