Now that our economies are gradually getting out of the recession, mergers and acquisitions are very hot again. However research shows time and time again that a lot of mergers and acquisitions are not providing the pay-offs hoped for. Good initial background information before concluding the deal  is therefore of the essence. Financial due diligence is always part of that information, but cultural and human resource due diligence become, certainly for service companies, become also more and more en vogue. Commercial due diligence is however a rather new way of getting additional  background information to increase the success rate of these deals.
Recently I had  the pleasure of mentoring the thesis of Christophe Robinet and working with him on pay-off optimisation of mergers and acquisitions. 
His thesis work “Merger & Acquisition Pay-off Optimization. The commercial due diligence imperative”  is now available in book form and I can highly recommend it.

Excerpt book Merger & Acquisition pay-off optimization

Prof.Drs.R.Sybren Tijmstra