Why seller preparation, not financing, now sets the pace of M&A
An HBR Analytic Services panel, sponsored by Datasite, with Allied Universal's chief M&A officer Mike Beregovsky and BNP Paribas sell-side head Lukasz Dziarnowski. Worth it for the practical detail: why seller prep now sets deal pace, how to handle ERP data in an auction, and how to keep a consortium deal alive under foreign investment review.
- Todd Pruzan · Senior editor, research and special projects (moderator), HBR Analytic Services
- Alex Clemente · HBR Analytic Services
- Mike Beregovsky · President and Chief M&A Officer, Allied Universal
- Lukasz Dziarnowski · Managing Director, Head of Sell-Side Practice, BNP Paribas
- Mike Beregovsky says financing is no longer the bottleneck for Allied Universal, so the pace of a deal now depends on how well the seller has prepared its data.
- Lukasz Dziarnowski keeps the raw ERP data cube out of buyers' hands in an auction and has sell-side advisers analyse it early, in confidence, instead.
- Diligence covers more topics in the same four plus eight week timetable, and a VDR participant list can run to 200 people or more, mostly third-party advisers.
- Both panellists want synergy and integration planning to start on day one, with the local operators who will have to deliver it.
- Buyers still leave cyber risk to the end of diligence; it rarely moves price but can be a go or no-go if the target is a back door into the group.
- For foreign investment screening, Dziarnowski advises pre-clearing buyers and giving consortia a toggle to switch off a problem investor's governance rights.
Financing used to be the slow part of a deal. Mike Beregovsky, president and chief M&A officer at Allied Universal, calls it the long pole in the tent. Now, he says, his company has enough liquidity to do most deals without deal-specific financing, so it is all about seller prep: how good the seller's adviser is, whether they can prepare the data and are willing to share it (around 19:30). When the prep is not there, his team takes a lot longer, spends more money internally and may not deliver the valuation the seller expects.
“If you separate M&A from the operations and you develop a thesis and you develop a synergies plan without the local operators that later get to execute it, you're not going to have a good outcome.”
Mike Beregovsky, President and Chief M&A Officer, Allied Universal
The webinar is run by Harvard Business Review Analytic Services and sponsored by Datasite, which also sponsored the research it discusses. Todd Pruzan of HBR Analytic Services moderates, Alex Clemente sets out the report, and Beregovsky and Lukasz Dziarnowski, managing director and head of sell-side practice at BNP Paribas, do most of the talking. Clemente says the report reveals a need for speed, particularly in due diligence. In live polls in November 2022, almost two thirds of the audience named recession fears as the biggest factor for the year ahead, and the audience expected valuations to fall.
“The last thing you want to tell the management is to give the most detailed sort of a data cube that's coming out of the ERP system into the buyer's hands, especially if you're running an auction.”
Lukasz Dziarnowski, Managing Director, Head of Sell-Side Practice, BNP Paribas
Dziarnowski gives the sell-side version of seller prep (around 21:00). The last thing you want, he says, is to hand the most detailed data cube out of the ERP system to buyers, especially in an auction where several want to run their own analysis. Instead his sell-side advisers go through the data early, in complete confidentiality, and separate out the right trends. That analysis then runs through the whole marketing suite, from the teaser and information memorandum to the management presentation. Specific buyer questions get extra analysis on request. Being detailed early in the prep phase, he says, makes the buyer universe much easier to manage.
“Sometimes when we have a list of participants in the VDR you might have 200 people or even more working on a deal and mostly the third party advisors.”
Lukasz Dziarnowski, Managing Director, Head of Sell-Side Practice, BNP Paribas
Does technology give deal teams time back? Paradoxically no, Dziarnowski says (around 14:00). The typical process still runs four weeks plus eight in the second round. What changed is depth: limited partners, investment committees, shareholders and boards want to know M&A money is spent well, so there are more topics in the same window. Financial sponsors also hire a much wider spectrum of advisers than 10 or 15 years ago, sometimes a separate third party for each diligence topic, so a VDR participant list can reach 200 people or more. Technology, he says, lets people dig deeper in the same time frame.
“This is something that the buyers still leave for the last moment of the due diligence process or they don't pay too much attention to, and they should.”
Lukasz Dziarnowski, Managing Director, Head of Sell-Side Practice, BNP Paribas
Integration planning starts on day one, Beregovsky says (around 16:30). His local operations teams know competitors and customers, help source and execute deals, and inherit the integration afterwards. Develop a thesis and a synergies plan without them, and the local people might look at you and say you're out of your mind. Dziarnowski agrees from the seller's side: a buyer pays the seller only for the synergies it believes it can extract with limited integration cost, so he pushes buyers to quantify them early. A high-level idea on paper, he says, goes into nobody's valuation.
Allied Universal's own deal machine changed with scale. Beregovsky says the company did over 90 deals in about a decade, almost all in North America, until the G4S acquisition took it into more than 90 countries. Since then it has looked for advisers with global reach to add to its domestic partners. Working with a handful of accounting, legal, insurance and IT firms across many deals saves a lot of time and money, he says, because they learn the process. Seller preparedness also eliminates surprises: sellers often have a number in mind, and once his team digs in it finds things they didn't know about.
Cyber risk still gets left late. Dziarnowski says buyers leave it to the last moment of diligence or pay it little attention, even though diligence and insurance products now exist to cover it (around 24:00). Beregovsky says it is rarely a factor in value. In rare cases it decides go or no-go: if the acquisition could be used as a global back door into the wider organisation, that could mean no deal. Otherwise, he says, the answer is to implement the company's cyber security practices quickly after the acquisition.
Foreign investment rules decide where Allied Universal hunts at all. Beregovsky says the company invests gladly where rules are applied equally to everybody, but restrictive regimes that favour local operators stifle FDI and keep it out of otherwise attractive markets. Dziarnowski cites EU and UK data showing that less than five percent of reviewed deals go to phase two or are blocked: rare, but a big issue when it happens. His advice is to read the buyer universe through that lens and ask buyers to pre-clear. In a consortium with a passive 25 percent investor from an unwelcome country, put a toggle in the shareholder agreement to switch off its governance rights or replace it.
The panel closes on ESG. Beregovsky says Allied Universal publishes an annual ESG report that customers ask for and review, and that its labour practices are heavily regulated everywhere it works. Dziarnowski sees ESG as value creation as well as a diligence box: financial sponsors now apply an ESG framework across portfolio companies so they can sell later at a higher multiple, and green or sustainability-linked financing is becoming a market norm.
Data room work starts before the room opens: a seller that has analysed its own data and prepared answers moves faster and protects its price. Plan permissions for a participant list that may run past 200 people, most of them outside advisers.
what's the secret to deal making today match the ideal buyer to the perfect seller it okay that's simple the hard part is always been how I'm Doug Cullen Chief product and strategy officer at data site in this webinar hosted by Harvard Business Review analytic services our expert panel will explore how technology can answer that question thank you to the panelists and thanks to all of you for coming we'll make it worth your while data site the digital home of m a with you every step of the M day life cycle data site where deals are made welcome to today's Harvard Business Review analytics Services webinar managing complexity in Tech driven m a I'm Todd pruzan editor for senior editor for research and special projects and I want to thank all of you for joining us today and I want to thank datasite for
making this webinar possible mergers and Acquisitions or M A have long been a complex business practice but two aspects have always been integral to a deal Maker's success speed and knowledge and having the competitive advantage in these two areas gives organizations leverage in their M A deals while M A activity is growing and is expected to continue to rise dealmakers are finding themselves increasingly in need of Data Insights as they also look to improve the efficiency of the m a process in today's webinar Alex Clemente of hbr analytics services will explore insights from a recent report on key trends affecting M A he'll then talk about M A Innovation highlighting those areas where the best teams are gaining Advantage with Mike maragowsky president and chief M A officer at Allied Universal and Lucas jernovsky managing director and head of M A sell side practice at BNP pariba the three of them will share their
perspectives on this report and they'll talk about key trends in m a how companies are using data in the m a process to increase valuations the role of digital tools in the m a process how technology is increasing the speed and efficiency of M A deals the role of environmental social and governance or ESG culture in m a success and what the future of M A looks like as a reminder this webinar is being recorded but we are live and this is an interactive webinar we'll even have a couple of survey questions in a few minutes so if you have questions or comments at any time just type your question into the Q a chat box if you would like us to ask your question anonymously please let us know that and if you need help at any time click on the yellow question mark help icon Mike lukash thank you so much for being with us today and Alex let's start with you so you can provide us with some context from the report to set the stage for our discussion today yeah thank you for that introduction
Todd and I'd also like to thank datasite for sponsoring the body of research that we're presenting today when they approached us about conducting this project we thought that given the disruption caused by the pandemic it would be interesting to see how M A might have been impacted like so many other aspects of business were and while the pandemic did change the order of many organizations growth strategies the longer Arc of digital transformation has been set in motion years before the covid-19 outbreak and what we reveal in the report is the Need for Speed particularly in the area of due diligence as a way to establish a competitive advantage and as mentioned the transformational wave of the past decade is really increased capabilities around data and analytics based on new digital Technologies and these capabilities are now evident in everything from customer service to product pricing to supply chain visibility and procurement and now M A is getting into the data-driven
transformation quite frankly as it should okay Alex thank you for the overview it's time for a survey question we want to start with with one question it should be appearing on your screen you can take a few questions to answer it the first question is Which social political or economic factors do you expect most to affect deal making in 2023 please select among International military conflicts Talent shortages recession fears inflation Anti-Trust efforts supply chain risks or cyber security concerns you take a minute to answer that and then we'll get to the results okay so let's see what came in and it looks like by by a long shot recession fears almost two-thirds of respondents feel that that is probably the most important factor to affect the old making next year
inflation comes behind almost almost one out of five Alex you mentioned the pandemic are the the other factors affecting m a right now obviously recession fears inflation much on people's clients yeah I mean the report that we in in our report what we included was a meteor study some data from a mid-year study the data site conducted of more than 500 M A Executives and that study was done in the first half of the year so keep in mind we're now we're now in November but in that particular study the deal maker cited the Russia Ukraine conflict followed by inflation and Rising costs of capital ESG which is environment society and governance supply chain risk and compliance with National Security and antitrust regulations as the top five factors impacting M A at that time so you know looking at
what we have here is is from this audience is the recession for certainly the recession the volume of the recession has has increased certainly since since May or June time frame but you know including that there's some strong macro forces at play in addition to the pandemic and then of course the challenge of M A itself in an uncertain environment okay great thanks for that context yes this six-month difference is a pretty big difference this year survey question number two which types of deals do you expect to see more of in 2023 the options are transfer transformational m a debt financing secondary buyouts divestitures carve outs and exits fundraising bolt-ons IPOs and specs or liquidation and bankruptcy so let's wait for those results for a little bit okay and let's see how the answers came
in for this one okay again about two out of 5 41 42 percent said the divestitutes carve outs and exits are something that people are expecting to see next year transformational M A liquidation and bankruptcy those those both are also kind of leading leading predictions Alex based on based on the the research what kinds of deals will be will we be seeing this year are they are they different from what came in in the in the survey yeah I mean going back to the study that data site conducted transformational Acquisitions was actually the number one type of transaction and an example of that would be a brick and mortar company let's say acquiring a pure play digital company in order to acquire their technical capabilities as well as their technology itself other top deals that were cited were
debt financing secondary buyouts again divestitures coming in fourth or fifth carve outs and exits and fundraising again this was a study that was conducted about six months ago so we absolutely expect you know there to be some change those are the top five what was interesting to me was in in this the data site study liquidation and bankruptcy was actually at the bottom of the list but you know six months later we're kind of coming more into this impending global session and we see actually I think it was 20 percent the bottom of yeah 21 here I would expect that number probably to to rise as well okay thank you for thank you for that last survey question where do you see M A valuations headed in 2023 the selections are increasing decreasing remain the same or not sure a few seconds to answer that okay and the results
so it looks like everybody says decreasing that's not a huge shock that that makes a lot of sense I think this is this is what what we're I think we're all seeing the same thing right now I want to start the panel I want to to start with Lucas jaranovsky from BNP parody bot lukash how does your company use technology in m a today that's that's different from how you may have once used it and what what benefits does technology bring you in m a yeah so so and thanks for having me it's a it's a really great opportunity I put it I'll put my answers in a slightly different way because I'll try to present it how my clients use it because I advise companies mostly on sale size but also on buy size in m a and I and I think the technology has definitely come into m a and it's it's getting getting more traction and I agree with the earlier statements that it's there to to improve efficiency
and speed but also I think what we see now is to increase the quality of due diligence because it's mostly focused on due diligence it's people are are with the with the technical tools that they have the same sort of time frame they can dig deeper they can run more details on analysis which you know I would think leads to better decisions and and and better due diligence the acquisition targets which might also lead to you know to more accurate valuations so so clearly due diligence will probably the key aspect of of that and another aspect of Technology being used in m a and that's what the pandemic brought is is ability to sort of disintermediate and and from some physical meetings and you know I I did deals in 20 and 21 without seeing the other party for at all in in in in in in in reality in real life so everything can be done now over
internet and or in virtually great thank you I want to turn to Mike bergofsky from Allied Universal Mike how is m a changed for for your company in recent years and are you seeing any new trends around the role of advisors in particular yeah certainly so for us the biggest change in Acquisitions came with the acquisition of G4S last year and entry into the global market for us so we've done over 90 deals in a decade or so almost exclusively North America which was the focus of our m a strategy with the acquisition of G4S last year we became a global leader in the security space and as part of that acquisition we've pivoted our strategy on a more Global basis so today we're over 90 countries which gives us plethora of new markets to hunt for deals in as it relates to advisors we have started proactively looking for firms that could deliver that Global capabilities to us
to kind of augment our domestic Partners so some firms have direct subsidiaries some Affiliates others have loose Partnerships but that access to global advisory is increasingly important to us so not surprisingly we found that multi-deal relationships with key advisors and diligence resources save us a lot of time and money so we worked with a handful of accounting legal Insurance I.T vendors for a number of years on many deals so having these teams learn our process understand how we do things saves again a lot of money and time so taking our business globally is is quite a big change for us thank you let me finally add here on the on advisors what I've seen and it's I think partly partly on mostly driven by the activity is coming from Financial sponsors is that they they use a what much wider Spectrum advisor that they used to I mean 10 15 years ago that
would be you know financial advisor legal maybe commercial and that we probably it right now you know you have an incredible level of fragmentation and and some of the bigger sponsors can hire as a a separate third party advisor to cover each and every topic of due diligence and sometimes when we have you know a list of participants in the vdr you you might have you know 200 people or even more working on a deal and mostly the third party advisors Lucas just to to stay with you for a minute how how are you seeing technology improving m a particularly around deal execution and productivity what what are deal makers doing with the time they're getting back from from the the improved efficiencies they're getting from Tech well paradoxically I don't think they're getting much time but there is simply some analysis of how long the sort of the typical m a product takes from the beginning to the end of
the due diligence phase and hasn't changed it much so he has sort of four weeks plus eight weeks in in the second round I think the due diligence as I mentioned is much more detailed and people move move quicker on certain topics but there are just more topics I think there's much more scrutiny coming from limited partners and investment committees within the sponsor Financial sponsor community and also shareholders and Boards at corporates that they want to make sure that the money spent on M A is spent well and that increases demand for more detailed due diligence and then the deal teams actually need to deploy it and then through the use of technology or advisors they do that on processes and takes them exactly the same amount of time now how they do that what I've seen recently is incredibly interesting and and I think this is the way forward is the use of AI and data mining and trying to analyze very detailed micro Trends within a a company and then and identify those trends that would then support the equity story and the the
sort of unique selling points on the sell side and on the buy side would give the reason for the buyer to pay premium the price and there are you know special teams that do that do it that analyze this data and then we package it so that it could be easier is easily analyzed and I recommend it to my clients and I think that that will be becoming more and more common in in various sectors Lucas thank you we're just a reminder we're we're interactive I'm already seeing some some really intriguing questions coming in and I wanted to ask a question to both of you and maybe we'll start with Mike this is from from John loser who's asking at what point in the m a life cycle is the ideal time do you think to to start formal and informed integration planning Mike maybe we'll start with you yeah sure so the integration planning starts at the very beginning you know our process and the way we approach M A from a corporate standpoint
it comes with very close collaboration with apps an apps are critical right the Ops and our teams on the ground they know their local competitors so they help you Source the deals they help you execute right they know everything about their competitors their customers how good they are their reputations and critically with integration right once the deal is complete and we hand over we hand over the acquisition to our local teams to integrate they have to be prepared you know if if you separate M A from the operations and you develop a thesis and you develop a synergies plan without the local operators that later get to execute it you're not going to have a good outcome because if you hand over something and local guys might look at you and say you're out of your mind that's we can't achieve these synergies or the synergies in a completely different place you haven't done your job correctly so partnering with operations early in the process and having them involved in this integration and integration planning is critical so day one literally day one and I couldn't agree I couldn't agree
more with with Mike and the way I do it when when I advise on selling a company and there are buyers who might have synergies is to convince them that them from the very beginning that they should look into it they should assess the the scope of the synergies and try to quantify them and qualify them early in the process because the seller will only get paid for you know parts of it the bigger the better if the buyer believes that they are achievable and that they can extract them with limited integration costs if it's just a very high level idea on paper then no one will will include that in the evaluation the more conviction the buyer will have that these synergies are real the more of it will then go into the final price so the earlier you start the better and frankly by the way having transparency with the potential targets of what the synergies might be how they could be achieved where they come from also creates quite a bit of trust because those teams those management teams will become part of your organization sort of spraying a new idea
on them you know without their buying or input is also quite challenging so for us we believe in that transparency early both with our teams and with targets that makes sense that sounds critical I also want to ask a question from srinidi bharadwaj we we touched on this a little bit earlier but can we elaborate on how data and analytics plays a role in diligence either on the buy side or the sell side maybe start with start with Mike on that one sure so look if you're talking about speed of M A and and and capacity and capability to do the work that we just discussed earlier you know data is critical it used to be financing and deal specific financing was the longest part right the long pole in the tent that would take the longest period of time now that you know for us frankly we have sufficient liquidity to do the most deals without yield specific financing it's all about seller prep
right and that comes frankly with how good of an advisor they have right can they move quickly can they prepare the data are they willing to share it and are they willing to kind of present it and have the sophistication to deliver to us what we need and for us it's fairly simple right we buy companies of a certain cut we know exactly what we're looking for and advisors that sell us businesses know what we're looking for so it's it's kind of the seller prep and seller organization and creation of that data set is critical and by the way that's spectrum of preparation is very broad we see folks with great advisors and great data and all the way on the other end where the prep is not there and frankly it just means we're gonna have to take a lot longer spend more money internally and potentially not deliver the valuation that the buyer expects the seller Franklin expense and I think when you want to touch it up on the particular you know item of data analytics I think the crowd comes is super important here because when
you're selling company the last thing you want to to tell the management is to give the the most detailed sort of a data Cube that's coming out of the Erp system into the buyer's hands especially if you're running an auction and you have more than one buyer who want it because they want to run those funky funky analysis so so the way we do it is we want to to to hardwire it much earlier and we use the seller side advisors to look at the data cube in you know in complete confidentiality if you have a device sign they they they go through it they they unders they try to separate the right Trends and then the outcome of this analysis is the news across the whole marketing material Suite starting with the teaser through in from memo management presentation X precession and so on and so forth and then there might be some specific questions on the buy side related to some some additional analysis that can be then performed as as upon the request so you know being diligent and being
detailed in early on in the prep phase that can that can allow you to manage the the Via Universe much much easier and the biodynamics thank you question from Mike what what kinds of factors affect your company's productivity your efficiency when when you're working on a deal what what are your company's internal M A processes look like yeah so again two two major factors and we touched on them both one is seller preparedness and it it helps and I I can't overemphasize how critical that is not just for the sellers but it eliminates surprises right often sellers have a number in mind with their set of financials and once we dig in we find things that they didn't know about right and obviously requires quite a bit of adjustment and expectations but as I said our internal process and the speed of our execution is all about partnering with our Ops early you know having them involved having their buy-in early and throughout the process is
critical so those two things how prepared the sellers are and what our local teams are willing and ready to do and that's frankly part of the culture we try to Foster an organization that M A is part of our DNA you know folks have day jobs and M A is part of the day job it's not just running operations but helping and Advising our team with sourcing of the deals execution and diligence and integration so those two things I would say cell preparedness and partnering with apps thank you I we have so many great questions coming in we don't have a ton of time I wish we could get to everything but I do want to make sure that I ask a question that came in from Akshay Grover about cyber security how do you assess the Cyber risk from an acquisition and and what what approach do you take to mitigate it maybe we could start with Lucas on this one well I have to say that these days don't recognize this as a
risk there is a there's a ton of Education now taking place from different parts of this sort of advisory world to to bring this this issue to the Forefront and that this is a an example of a potential risk that needs to be due diligence and there are also ways of how this could be mitigated even through some some insurance products but but people don't think about it they and it's and it's and it's and it's rather strange giving you know the geopolitics and so on and so forth and and the the threats of cyber terrorism so I I think we there's a still way to go there are products now both on due diligence and insurance side that can cover that but but I have to say that this is something that the buyers still you know leave for the for the last moment of the due diligence process or or they don't pay too much attention to and and they should it's I would say it's rarely a value determinant factor it's sometimes in a
rare instances it's a go no-go decision right if it's viewed as a critical threat to the broad organization and this this acquisition could be used as you know some Global back door that could mean a no deal but rarely do you factor it and you know as part of the risks and and taking into account as in evaluation scenario cyber security risk you know we have it as an organization every company with Bible habit as their organization so all we can do is you know post acquisition is to implement fast cyber security practices that we have advisors to help us with but you know as I I fully agree it's often not you know front of Mind type type of an issue great across border deals Mike what what can an acquiring company do to manage any concerns that it might have about foreign owners taking control of a local company I want to hear from you both but let's start with Mike yeah so so given the labor intensity and critical nature of the work that we do regulation plays
kind of a big role in our industry and you know being a global global leader you know there's quite a bit of focus on kind of old domestic and international laws when rules are thoroughly and equally applied to everybody in the particular geography we know we can win and you know we gladly compete and more importantly we gladly invest in those geographies however that said we have absolutely come across a number of Fairly restrictive kind of local regimes and regulations that favor local operators and unfortunately these regulated stifle FDI and prevent Us and other Global players like us investing in these otherwise pretty attractive markets so you know at the end of the day given that capital is limited and Global opportunity status broad we simply allocate our time and resources in places where we know we don't have an unfair advantage against local players so it's it's it's absolutely a factor and quite frankly determines which
markets we hunt in it's a global phenomenon right I mean whatever you look whether it's us or Europe you have increased scrutinium focus on on on an attempt to control fdis and and control especially so the the the nationality of the investor who is supposed to invest into the so-called you know strategic sectors and and you know in most cases it just creates an administrative burden you need to to go through you know recently look at the European Union and UK data I would say you know less than five percent of deals that are being reviewed they're actually going to phase two or or are blocked so this is this is very small but if it happens then it's a it's a big issue it might impact the the transaction so you know what I would again advise buyers to do and and also the sellers to be prepared is to when you look at your buyer Universe try to look at it through that lens as well
which of them could have an issue and pre-clear it sometime or ask the buyers to free clear it with the regulator whether the whether the the the this particular acquirer will cause any issues or not and in situations where you have a consortia maybe made of financial investors where you know somewhere in the bags in a passive position you have a 25 investor from a country that's not welcome make sure that in that Consortium you have a you know a shareholder agreement that has a toggle to you know switch off the governance rights for that particular investor or an ability to replace them in the structure and provide you know alternative funding so that the the deal can still go through so again think of it early on get ready and make sure you you are in a dialogue with your with your buyers to make sure that they're doing the work as well to limit the risk between signing and closing that you may be called and then potentially blocked thanks lukash time for one more question about environmental social and
governance I want to start with Mike Mike how does your company think about how the ESG priorities of an acquisition Target are going to align with yours and maybe you can both both tackle this one too yeah so look ESG is is critical we take it very seriously and it's it's a big part of our process we have to think about each deal kind of if and how it fits into a broader business if and how it will cause ESG concerns or frankly on occasion alleviate some of the existing issues that we have you know we we produce an annual ESG report that we share with our investors a lot of our customers ask for that report and review it and ask us questions so it's available to the public as well so it's it's always it's always in our mind and again we we operate in a business that's heavily regulated how we interact with our labor you know how we hire recruit train uniform deploy pay compensate communicate with our labor is highly regulated everywhere so staying
on top of these regulations and as changes come in as other things happen it's a big part of what we do having the Regulatory and compliance that departments to keep track of these things and frankly that's one of the reasons why our customers choose us often versus local companies because they know we're religious about complying with these regulations and adjusting as the regulations change and I think that's a very good point because you know for me as you these days it's not only about taking the Box due diligence it's about value creation as well and this is the the indirect way of creating value because if if you have the the right ESG credentials and your customers want to deal with you because they have to sit there in the same you know frame of mind that generates additional value and and and and and this is this is good for business so I think and people have started to realize that and and you know even Financial sponsors when they look at the NASA that they can acquire they usually now have a certain ESG framework that they apply to all the portfolio companies because they
see that if they can make this certain changes through their holding period they can sell the business later at the higher multiple that justifies the the the ESG credentials and also to get financing these days from Banks but also but also you know funds and and lenders and investors you have to you have to be be able to to issue sustainability length or or green or green financial instruments because this is becoming a market Norm in in the investment grade Market as well as in in leverage loans okay well Lucas and Mike I wish we had another hour to keep talking about this we've got a lot of great questions coming in we are out of time but this has been a great conversation I want to thank all of you for joining us today and especially for participating in the survey thank you especially to Mike baragovsky from Allied Universal and Lucas journowsky from BNP paribaugh thanks also to Alex Clemente from hbr analytics services our producer today at
hbr is Caitlin Ameren thanks to her and to our partners at on24 and of course a big thanks to data site for making this discussion possible this concludes our presentation have a great day thank you
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