Most founders contemplating a large €20m+ investment round immediately calculate their percentage ownership ‘post-dilution’ (meaning what they owned immediately before the funding round, versus what they own the second after it closes).

Let’s imagine Liverpool’s sale of Luis Suarez for £75m to Barcelona as an M&A deal that needs careful structuring. Without knowing the real deal terms, here’s how we think it should have been structured.

US venture investors are not coming to Europe, they are already here, in VERY large numbers. They’re such a big factor in the European funding scene that the whole concept of “US VCs” and ”European VCs” is a thing of the past.

So far this year has seen 50%+ more European tech M&A deals above $50m vs. last year, according to Magister’s recent analysis of European Tech M&A.

Big Data is going through Gartner’s “trough of disillusionment”. Endless articles espouse why big data is a fad, doesn’t matter or is failing.

Whether a deal is $50m or $1bn; the dynamics are the same. A surprise email from a prominent acquirer expressing strong interest in a “strategic deal that could benefit both parties.”.

If we were a prospective client, evaluating whether or not to hire a particular M&A advisory firm, here are 5 questions we would pose.

At the height of the 2000 bubble, the scramble to buy promising early-stage businesses sent the price per employee through the stratosphere, to $10m+ at the peak. That meant a 20-person business, just getting market traction, could be valued at $200m. In hindsight, it was “insane”.