I’m on the train heading back from New York City and reflecting on the M&A event I just attended – the Conference Board’s Business Development Conference. I was fortunate to meet many senior M&A executives from various industries representing the who’s who of M&A professionals – people like Jacqui Winship of Whirlpool, David Holder of Baxter International and Jeanne Quirk of Tyco Electronics. All had journeyed to NYC, the city that never sleeps, coming from Michigan, Chicago and the Philadelphia metropolitan area, and representing diverse businesses. Why did all these M&A professionals converge to this conference and what wisdom were they seeking?

In order to answer this question you must rewind the clock back to the year 2000 and beyond — ah the good ole days. At the 2000 peak, investment bankers were buying Porsches like Chiclets. So what’s happened since then and why are so many predicting a major slow down in the economy that will halt M&A activity? Haven’t we learned from past erratic behavior that companies don’t always make logical M&A decisions? Did anyone tell Cisco or Microsoft that there’s an economic slow down? According to Bruce Jaffe, former M&A executive at Microsoft, Microsoft bought nearly 30 companies in 2007, a record year for them. Microsoft is not alone. Many companies continue to grow their businesses through acquisition.

In today’s economy you just can’t solely rely on an organic-growth strategy and expect your speed-to-market to be competitive in today’s economy. The world is flat according to Thomas Friedman. You can manufacture a product component in China, assemble it in a plant in Mexico, and sell it in Montana. You can build a website, and hence a business, through the use of world-class shippers like Federal Express, UPS and DHL and then ship your wares to practically anywhere in the world. Extending your product line or services, reaching into new markets, expanding distribution channels, lowering operating costs and many other factors drive companies to grow through an M&A strategy as opposed to pure organic growth. But what if your good intentions regarding your M&A strategy was sabotaged by poor execution? Speed to market, market agility, faster, better, and with less cost is truly what all these companies are striving to accomplish with their M&A strategy and the M&A event that I just attended was a forum for M&A professionals to share their philosophies, experiences and best practices regarding M&A. If I can be so bold to summarize a 1 ½ day conference into this blog entry, I believe the conference drew the foregone conclusion that no matter what the state of the economy companies will continue to grow their lines of business through an M&A strategy like they have for the past 100-plus years. The key difference today is that M&A professionals need to be more thorough in their investigations due to growing complexities and regulations over the years. Get more creative and think outside the box in structuring deals and strive to execute flawlessly, with the stealth of a finely trained secret agent (i.e. James Bond), always having the latest gadgets and information at his fingertips so that he can overcome overwhelming odds and be successful at the end. After all, winning is what it is all about, and the Conference Board’s Business Development Conference was about putting many great M&A athletes in the same room so they can all learn from each other and possibly stand a better chance of driving value to their businesses through laser sharp M&A planning and execution. The speakers at this event were world class and the venue was fab.