Despite strong financial planning and due diligence, most corporate transactions don’t meet the financial expectations of the buyer and shareholders.

Surprisingly, many of the biggest pitfalls for buyers are not financial — they’re related to HR challenges such as retention of key employees, incompatible cultures, inability to implement change, and loss of productivity.

Whether you’re buying or selling, Buck can help you optimize your negotiating strategies by evaluating all of the costs associated with benefits, compensation, and human resources programs.

We identify unrecognized assets and liabilities that enable our clients to optimize their negotiation strategies.

• Plan effective change strategies
• Establish or validate pricing of the transaction
• Negotiate attractive deals
• Conduct thorough due diligence
• Manage transition activities
• Design a post-transaction strategy

When a global energy and petrochemical company acquired a leading manufacturer of automotive and industrial lubricants, it faced the challenge of dealing with massive acquisition complexities.

Grandfathered provisions and complex calculations, as well as combining traditional pensions with equity plans, were all issues that needed to be considered. “This is probably the single most monumental task we’ve undertaken in the past 20 years,” said our client’s vice president of human resources.

Buck Consultants devised a unique solution that combined the plans in a way that gave employees the benefits they expected without creating a windfall. The project was such a success that the client said, “We will consider this a model for all our future acquisitions.”