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reading path

Building an acquisition program

An owner planning a roll-up or a repeatable acquisition strategy

Strategy & readiness
The evidence that doing many small deals well beats doing one large deal hopefully.

Why this order

This path is built around one of the more robust findings in the field: that programmatic acquirers outperform occasional large-deal acquirers. It starts with that claim, tests it against the academic evidence, and ends with the capital-allocation mindset the best serial acquirers share.

The path

1
How One Approach to M&A Is More Likely to Create Value Than All Others
McKinsey & Company (McKinsey Quarterly) · 2021; part of a two-decade research series

The claim, stated plainly, with the data behind it.

2
Performance of Serial Acquirers: Toward an Acquisition Program Perspective
Tomi Laamanen and Thomas Keil · Strategic Management Journal, 2008

The academic treatment of acquisition as a program rather than an event.

3
What Do Returns to Acquiring Firms Tell Us? Evidence from Firms That Make Many Acquisitions
Kathleen P. Fuller, Jeffry M. Netter, and Mike Stegemoller · The Journal of Finance, 2002

Why buyers of private targets fare better than the headline M&A statistics suggest.

4
Not All M&As Are Alike—and That Matters
Joseph L. Bower · Harvard Business Review, March 2001

The taxonomy that stops you applying one integration model to every deal.

5
The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success
William N. Thorndike, Jr. · 2012

Capital allocation as the CEO’s real job, which is the mindset underneath all of it.

Where this leaves you

You will have a repeatable thesis, a view on what to standardize across deals, and a reason to say no quickly.

Other paths

Before your first acquisition Preparing to sell, years ahead The skeptic’s course Before you sign the letter of intent You have just closed Valuation and diligence Search funds and entrepreneurship through acquisition
Acquisition Conciergeorientation · not legal, tax or valuation advice
Glad to help. Tell me roughly where you are and how much time you actually have, honestly rather than aspirationally, and I will pick the two or three works that will pay for their reading time fastest. If what you need is a program rather than a book, or an advisor rather than either, I will say so.