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I went from investment banker to Head of M&A to freelancer to entrepreneur. Each role taught me a set of skills the previous one didn't: Investment Banking: Technical skills, stress tolerance, annual bonus focus. Head of M&A: Strategic thinking, collaboration, 2-3 year range. Freelancer: Valuing my time, identifying core skills, thinking in monthly payments. Entrepreneur: Building a team, communicating and ownership, thinking in terms of cash burn and revenues. Sell-side, buy-side, entrepreneurship - I wouldn't have it any other way! What are the most important skills you've learned along your M&A journey?

People get lured into Head of M&A roles with no deal pipeline all the time. The title and the 200k package look great. The company sounds convincing about M&A being a strategic priority. But when the strategy shifts, that person is gone in six months. And then it becomes a one-way street. Stepping back into a Manager M&A role after holding a Head of function looks strange, right? Nobody wants to explain that in a first conversation. That's the part no one talks about when these offers come around. Because M&A seniority is counted in deals, not years. Eight years as Head of M&A at a company that closed two acquisitions is a completely different career from eight years somewhere doing six deals annually, even if the CV looks identical. The company's stated M&A ambitions matter a lot less than what it actually closed over the last five years. Have you seen people get stuck this way?

Almost every week, senior Corporate Development and M&A professionals reach out to me - Heads of M&A, PE Operating Partners, CFOs - curious about how freelancing works and how they could transition into it. The irony: Most of them are still sitting inside organizations that explicitly refuse to bring in independent talent. They rely on Big Four or MBB, because "that's the policy." You can't promote a new model only after you've left the old one. If you believe in the value of independence, be an advocate while you're still inside the system. Freelancing in M&A is not new. The only people still calling it a rebellion are the ones who haven't tried it.

M&A freelancers make more sense than hiring full-time M&A teams for most companies: • Corporate M&A teams are either underutilized or face too high workloads - an expensive dynamic • Unflexible M&A teams cannot possibly capture all M&A opportunities effectively • They get little exposure to other ideas and suffer from "group think" • Freelancers offer a much wider pool of talent in terms of skill set but also sub-industry exposure • Working with M&A freelancers fosters a competitive environment that drives efficiency and optimizes outcomes for each transaction. • In many deals, time is of essence. And adding a freelancer can significantly reduce the time spend until closing. Of course I'm biased, but I don't see how over the next 5 years corporate M&A will not become much more dynamic and agile. How do you see this development?

Almost every task across M&A transaction stages competes for the same three people's attention. But each stage asks for different skills, different levels of seniority, and different time investments. When you map where your team spends its hours, the bottlenecks in the process become obvious. # Deal origination takes longer than anyone admits. # Valuation gets compressed into tight timelines and misses obvious things that will be red flagged in the DD phase. # Due diligence plays catch-up - high pressure, no sleep. # Negotiation and LOI drafting should be handled by legal AND finance functions. # Purchase agreements sit in limbo between legal and commercial work. # Financing coordination becomes its own workstream. # Closing looks mechanical on paper, but in practice, it's where small errors compound. # Post-merger integration carries the weight of the deal's value without anything planned yet. Your team's attention becomes a constraint when it's split across eight stages. It becomes a force when you direct it where it matters most and bring execution capacity where it doesn't.

When management teams hire a Head of M&A, the question is almost always some version of "who is the best candidate?" The screening pulls in pedigree, number of deals closed, and the brand sitting at the top of the CV. I have no doubt that the hiring panel would sign off without hesitation on a CV that looks perfect on paper. But... “the perfect Head of M&A” for what context? A fragmented roll-up needs a relationship builder with sector knowledge and the patience for founder conversations that won't sound like M&A for the first six months. An advisor-driven auction strategy needs someone with technical sophistication, immediate credibility with bankers, and discipline inside a structured process. These are two operating profiles sharing one job title. Everyone in M&A is talking about the next decade. But we keep building M&A teams the same way we did a decade ago. Anyone screening CVs for a Head of M&A without first letting the deal strategy inform which profile you need is doing the work in the wrong order. The best candidate will almost always come up from that.