The majority of mergers and acquisitions fail. Not because the deal cannot be closed, but because of what happens afterwards. Investor and serial entrepreneur Kim Väisänen explains where the buyer's pitfalls come from, why deal fever is more dangerous than a bad price and what the successful ones do differently.
Kim also speaks on this theme in a free webinar on 7 May 2026:
Kim Väisänen: A buyer's guide to a successful M&A process.
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When is an acquisition successful?
From the outside, an acquisition looks straightforward: negotiations, signatures, money. According to Kim Väisänen, this is exactly where the illusion arises: "Technically, an acquisition succeeds the moment the papers are done and the money changes hands. The failure happens after the deal is closed", Kim says and continues:
"The deal is only successful once the acquired company is made part of the whole, the people stay on board, the customers do not disappear and the deal delivers the added value it was made for."
Failure begins before the deal
According to Väisänen, the reason acquisitions fail is often simple: "No one has thought through exactly what they want to buy, how they want to buy it, what they want to pay for it and how the acquired company fits into the whole. In other words, the homework has been left undone."
Many companies have an enter strategy, an idea that now is the time to buy, but no exit strategy. By exit, Väisänen does not mean divesting the company in this case, but the moment before the deal: "If these conditions are not met, we make an exit, meaning we do not go any further in the process."
Too often, deal fever takes over instead. "Hubris kicks in, you feel you have to buy, and then you buy airspace from Germany for billions without thinking it through. The process is under way, a competitor looks interesting, the leadership is excited. Then the danger is that you buy the wrong thing at the wrong price."
Four things the buyer must get right
According to Väisänen, a successful acquisition means that "one plus one is more than two", in other words the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. That requires getting four things right:
1. The right price. Väisänen says he often has the same conversation with a colleague at a private equity fund: "I'm often told that we are not in the business of buying cheap. And I always reply: right, but we are not in the business of buying expensive either." Too high a price can make the deal impossible to turn profitable.
2. Customer relationships. If key customers leave, a significant part of the value disappears quickly.
3. Key people. "What is a company without its people and employees?" If the best talent leaves, the buyer may not have got what they thought they were buying.
4. Synergies. Not just cost savings, but combining technologies, growing sales or gaining a new market position.
The first 100 days decide
After the deal comes the phase where many acquisitions are actually won or lost. Väisänen talks about a hundred-day plan: who does what, how the company is taken over, how key people are committed and how the new whole starts to function.
Without this, integration remains just talk. The calculations look good in Excel, but everyday reality does not follow.
The three deadly sins of an acquisition
Echoing Sari Baldauf's three deadly sins of business, Väisänen highlights three particularly dangerous ways of thinking that recur in failed acquisitions:
- Denying the facts. "Facts get denied before the deal, during the deal process and even after the company has been bought. For example, people may imagine that the acquiring company's leadership is better, even though the acquired company might have a considerably better sales director."
- Nostalgia. The company looks at itself through the past and misjudges its own position. "We were probably a great company once, but maybe we are not any more."
- Arrogance. The buyer can sometimes assume they are automatically better. "Even if you can buy some company that has been a tough competitor, you cannot fall into arrogance." The acquired company may have more capable people, better processes or better customer insight. If the buyer fails to see this, they can destroy the very value they bought.
An acquisition is a means, not an end in itself
Responsibility for success always lies with the acquiring company. Due diligence does not remove it. According to Kim, you need an "equilateral triangle", meaning the owners, the board and the management must be in sync.
Väisänen's thinking can be summed up like this: an acquisition does not succeed by buying a company. It succeeds when the buyer knows, already before the deal, why to buy, what to buy, when not to buy and what happens immediately after the deal.
"An acquisition is a means of growth, not an end in itself. It requires homework, humility and the ability to see the facts even when they do not support your original enthusiasm", Kim concludes.
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Thank you Kim!
We continue on the topic in a free webinar on 7 May 2026: Kim Väisänen: A buyer's guide to a successful M&A process. Join us!