Corporate Strategy and How to Shape an M&A Success Story
Let’s start with food – specifically, snacks.
Many of you probably tore into a bag of candy M&Ms in recent weeks, or perhaps you popped open a can of neatly stacked Pringles potato chips to feed your urge to munch. Simple acts in the life of a snacker, right?
So much more complex in the world of business. Mars, the company that makes M&Ms, recently announced that it was buying Kellanova, the company that makes Pringles. Sweet meets savory in a $36 billion purchase.
This is but one megadeal in the landscape of mergers and acquisitions (M&As), transactions where two or more businesses consolidate their ownership and operations. Dr. Emilie Feldman, a management professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, who has researched and taught M&As since joining Wharton more than 13 years ago, thinks about these types of deals daily.
“Mergers and acquisitions are when two companies come together,” notes Feldman, who adds that macroeconomic factors like interest rates and inflation can impact the volume of and appetite for M&A deals. “Specifically, one company might buy another, or there might be an exchange, so they come together and create one entity from two…Corporate strategy has to do with where we set the boundaries of a company. So, do we expand by doing mergers and acquisitions, or do we want to reduce our boundaries, for example, by removing certain businesses? That’s what I’ll refer to as a divestiture.”
Dr. Feldman, who published the book Divestitures: Creating Value Through Strategy, Structure and Implementation (McGraw Hill, 2023), recently shared her insight on corporate strategy and M&As with high school students attending Wharton Global Youth’s on-campus summer programs.
A Framework of Four
In cases like Mars and Kellanova, or the example Feldman highlighted in her lecture of the Chobani yogurt company buying La Colombe coffee company in 2023 for $900 million, companies must think through essential issues when evaluating potential M&A deals. These include synergies, access to new markets and customers, technology integration and cultural fit. “There are a lot of considerations we have to think very carefully about in understanding what merger and acquisition transactions are and [how] to make them successful,” noted Feldman, adding that many M&A deals fail to create value, often due to overstating synergies, paying too high a price and poor post-merger integration.
Feldman presented the following framework to guide companies (and future M&A execs) as they ponder expanding through mergers and acquisitions:
✅ The objective: Why are you doing the deal? Fundamental to the ultimate success of a deal, stressed Dr. Feldman, is to identify areas where the two companies can create value together that they couldn’t achieve separately. These objectives might involve vertical integration, when the company’s supply chain is integrated and owned by the company; related diversification, or expansion into similar markets; and unrelated diversification, where a deal helps a company enter an entirely new industry. She pointed to online retailer Amazon buying Whole Foods health-food market as one example of a deal with lots of cross-pollination, including leveraging Amazon’s logistical expertise for a chain of markets, moving into physical retail, and increasing revenues.
✅ Due diligence: What are you buying? Due diligence, noted Dr. Feldman, is about deeply understanding the target company — its strengths, weaknesses and how it would integrate into the existing company. “There’s a whole list of issues and questions to think about when you’re doing due diligence,” she said. “Customers, markets, supply chains, suppliers, executive teams, technology, competition. Due diligence is a very comprehensive exercise to think about what you’re getting, is it valuable in and of itself, and how are you going to make it more valuable given the context of your own company?”
✅ Value proposition: How much should you pay for it? Don’t just focus on a number, noted Professor Feldman, but instead carefully assess the value of an acquisition target. In the case of Facebook acquiring WhatsApp, she asked: was $90 billion a fair price? “We have to think about [the company’s growth potential] as a key driver,” said Dr. Feldman. “Even if WhatsApp is not that valuable, not that big [on its own], maybe there are other markets, or other areas that we could expand into that might make it worth that kind of price tag…Part of it is market access, part of it is growth potential, part of it is customers and thinking about the alternative scenario” of another company possibly the acquisition deal – should you eliminate that competitive threat.
✅ Working together: How should you address post-merger integration? When it comes to the values, beliefs and behaviors that define how a company operates, the cultural differences between acquiring and target companies are often underestimated, noted Professor Feldman. “Post-merger integration is a big issue,” she stressed, pointing to Unilever’s acquisition of the ice cream company Ben & Jerry’s for $326 million in 2000. Unilever is now considering divesting the company and spinning off its entire ice cream portfolio. Among the challenges for these two very different corporate cultures: a unique business ethos led by Ben & Jerry’s strong social activism compared to Unilever’s more traditional corporate approach; different operational processes related to pay structures and production priorities; and the importance of preserving brand identity, which could be tricky when a giant consumer goods company like Unilever takes over a smaller, niche player like Ben & Jerry’s. “You can imagine a lot of differences here in terms of how these two companies are managed and how they’re led,” added Dr. Feldman.
M&A, concluded Professor Feldman, while a core part of corporate strategy, can have its challenges. Careful analysis and integration are critical to success. Want to dig a little deeper into Dr. Feldman’s research? Listen to this Wharton Business Daily podcast.
Hero Image Photo Credit: Jeshoots.com
Conversation Starters
While Dr. Feldman’s 4 step framework will help you become a savvy M&A manager, these same steps can be applied to other aspects of our lives. How so?
What is a divestiture?
Have you had any personal experience in the M&A world? Share your story in the comment section of this article.
The articles tood out to me because it highlights something I experience daily in corporate law: how M&A transactions go far beyond financial modeling. Strategic integration, cultural alignment, and clear communication between teams are just as critical as valuation or contractual terms.
Even as a trainee, I had the opportunity to structure a corporation (S.A.) designed for future dual listing a project that required strategic thinking from the corporate design phase through to regulatory and governance implications. So when the article emphasizes the importance of aligning corporate structure with strategic intent, I immediately saw a connection with the challenges I faced in building something solid, functional, and capable of being accepted both internally and by regulators.
Another point that struck me was the emphasis on clarity of purpose not only during the deal, but especially post-transaction. In practice, I often see how that “post-deal” phase is underestimated, which is exactly where integration failures and communication breakdowns tend to happen. Seeing this addressed from the beginning as part of the corporate strategy shows maturity and realism.
In summary, the article reinforced something I’ve been learning through hands-on experience: working in corporate law today requires approaching M&A with a strategic and multidisciplinary mindset. It’s not just about understanding the legal structure it’s about having business awareness, anticipating long-term risks, and recognizing how today’s decisions shape the success of a transaction in the future.
Carolina, your corporate law experience is the perfect example of how M&A is a cross-functional activity—legal, financial, cultural.
To follow up on your observation: did your deal team employ governance-by-design structures in deal design—where cultural points of integration and communication protocols are built contractually or through oversight committees? In my nonprofit integration project, we used role-alignment charters prior to onboarding, which cut misunderstanding by 40%. Incorporating that type of clarity up front has the power to shift post-merger dynamics.
I would love to know how legal departments reconcile rigorous contract structures with the soft machinery of integration—such as tone-setting, shared leadership, and informal feedback mechanisms—while meeting regulatory requirements.
Dr. Feldman’s four-step M&A model—defining objectives, thorough due diligence, valuing synergies over price, and post-merger integration—is what transforms these transactions into strategic transformations. The Mars–Kellanova megadeal is a classic case in point, and analysis in the article on culture clashes (e.g., Unilever and Ben & Jerry’s) adds a welcome human dimension to M&A.
Objective clarity is vital—without it, strategic misalignment undermines long-term value unless you’re aware of whether you’re pursuing vertical integration, related diversification, or venturing into new industries. During my AWS/SQL fintech internship, we treated feature releases as mini-M&A deals: defining a clear objective (e.g., move into SMS onboarding), checking technical feasibility, projecting ROI—and only then building it. That disciplined process landed us a 15% conversion increase in our pilot.
Due diligence isn’t skin-deep. It encompasses culture, governance structures, and supply-chain sustainability. In my nonprofit experience working at Bhoomika Trust, we did not just evaluate potential partners on budgets but on mission alignment and operational readiness. That kind of whole-person vetting is what Dr. Feldman describes—and where so many high-stakes mergers fail.
Valuation is about more than price. Facebook buying WhatsApp proves that the premium is being paid for scale, user stickiness, and future scale. Priced in an AWS and Python fintech prototype I built, we priced new features not just based on development cost but on projected user lifetime value—routing product prioritization and investment strategy rather than going after feature parity.
Post-merger integration (PMI)—cultural misalignment kills deals faster than overpayment. Ben & Jerry’s-Unilever example illustrates how institutional values decide fate. We saw the same when integrating a donor management tool into our practices: invisibility within roles and leadership alignment slowed adoption. Incorporating ritualized onboarding processes, shared values workshops, and feedback loops assisted in streamlining integration and efficacy.
A strategic question for the community: For cash-starved midsize companies following the deal, are there agile PMI architectures—like phased integration pods, culture alignment sprints, or value-area navigators—that can fuel synergy without drowning workers?
This article masterfully reframes M&A as an end-to-end strategy exercise—from original intent through ultimate integration. A must-read for next-generation business leaders: deals don’t create size—they require discipline, vision, and organizational empathy.