Post-acquisition integration
Our work begins once a deal is signed. We do not source or structure the transaction. We make the operation hold afterwards.
In M&A language this is post-merger integration, or PMI. In the owner's language it is the year after the deal.
Who it is for
An owner or an acquirer: a family group, a holding company or an investor in Dubai, the UAE or the GCC. They have bought, or merged with, a large single-unit or multi-site service business: hotels, retail, food and beverage, or a service operation with people at the point of delivery. The deal has closed recently, or it is about to close.
What they are dealing with
The deal made sense on paper. The operation is not delivering it. The general manager or the founder left after completion, and more of the business than anyone realised was carried in that one head. Two teams still work two different ways: two ways of closing the month, two sets of habits, two answers to the same customer question. Some sites perform and others drift. The acquirer's own people are stretched across their existing business and cannot run the new one day to day. The people who were promised nothing would change are waiting to see whether that was true. The whole thing holds on goodwill and on the owner's personal involvement.
The owner wants to keep the people and make the business hold.
When to call
Before the cutting starts. The reflex after a disappointing first quarter is to reduce headcount and centralise. In a service business the people are the asset that was bought, and the customers follow them out of the door. The right moment to bring in an operator is when the numbers first disagree with the deal model, or earlier: a call before completion lets the owner plan the first ninety days with the person who will be in the seat for them.
The first two weeks
Jeff reads both operations before changing anything. He sits with every manager on both sides, visits every site, and traces how work, money and decisions move between them. The first written output is a short account of what must change, what can stay, and in which order, so the owner sees the whole picture before the first move is made.
How the engagement runs
A defined mandate with a clock, agreed at the start. Jeff takes the operating seat for that period, interim or fractional depending on what the business needs, reporting to the owner or the board. The combined team does the work; Jeff sets the routines, holds the line on standards, and deals with the handoffs where the two operations meet. Reporting moves to a rhythm the owner can rely on. Where the acquired business has franchisees, partners or a founder still in the building, those relationships are handled as part of the mandate.
How this differs from integration consultants
Integration consultants plan the integration and report on its progress. Jeff sits inside the business and runs it until it holds: the operating seat, the weekly decisions, the people, the sites. He is accountable for the result while he is in the seat, and the business is built to run without him when he leaves.
How it ends
The routines hold without Jeff in the room. The successor is identified inside the business where one exists, and prepared to take the seat. Jeff leaves on the date agreed at the start. That is the measure of the work.
Proof
A Swiss home-services group, 2023 to 2024. An investor-backed group bought a founder-led family business: around 2,000 staff, twelve agencies, six of them franchised. Jeff led the integration for fifteen months from the operating seat. The forecast at handover was the loss of 10 to 15 percent of clients and three of the six owned agency heads. Client churn through the transition was zero, and no agency head left. Year-end close went from four and a half months to three weeks, reporting moved from quarterly to monthly across thirteen entities, and two franchise buy-backs were integrated on the way. The manager Jeff developed as his successor became the group's chief operating officer.
A founder-built resort in Gran Canaria, 2002 to 2003. A European tour operator had acquired one of the best-known timeshare resorts in Europe and needed its food and beverage operation, around ten outlets across three resort clusters, brought to group standards. Jeff held the F&B mandate: central purchasing and production, integrated point-of-sale reporting, a consolidated back of house, and a controller on an independent reporting line. A fifteen-month integration mandate, completed in under twelve months.
Jeff has run the operating side of four integrations, for four kinds of owner: a global hotel company absorbing a franchise brand, a tour operator, a hotel group at an owner's property, and an investor-backed group. The sectors were hospitality, home services and multi-site retail. The pattern was the same each time.