In the immortal words of Ferris Bueller: Life moves pretty fast. So, too, does the M&A process - especially once it's publicly announced. That's when everyone is watching your every move, waiting to see how it will pan out before they make investment decisions. Before they decide to work with you, or buy from you.

Yes, M&A may be essential for your growth, but it's even more essential to make sure everything happens as smoothly as possible, as quickly as possible, with no mistakes.

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"It's the same little things that can trip you up in this process," says Randy Worzala, Regional Director Business Development - Americas at TMF Group. "It's getting the scope of services and pricing mechanisms right in a TSA. It's plans for major service continuity issues. It's making sure your team has on-site, local expertise in statutory accounting, not just transactional accounting. And with M&As moving so fast, any one of the small details can be de-prioritised or even lost in translation while companies and lawyers focus on the deal's minutiae.

"That's why we always recommend multinationals working on a carve-out or M&A deal seek external compliance help from a single partner with in-depth knowledge of all markets involved in the deal. It could save money, resource - and, importantly, reputation."

A professional services partner such as TMF Group can take that back-office burden away from the necessary parties, letting them focus on the much bigger issues, like exactly how to transfer staff and assets from one party to another.

Working with an external provider can also help the buyer ramp up much more quickly than would be possible alone. Worzala references one deal he worked on where the buyer was inheriting a division without any back office functions. They were going to go to market to find local language capabilities and regulatory expertise in 20 different countries - that's 20 different RFPs to deal with, all while a fast-moving M&A deal is happening in the background and normal business operations are ongoing.

"They didn't have the time to sit around and hope they found the skillsets," says Worzala. "I told them we already had the capabilities, the expertise, the ready-made solution and, importantly, the resource to help them get to work ASAP. We now work with this company in all 20 countries as a trusted advisor and partner for growth.

"The number of different stakeholders and partners that company had engaged at the beginning created an incredible amount of hand-offs and interdependencies that were not always seamless. And they tell people, in hindsight, they would have preferred a bundled solution with TMF Group to save time, money and hassle from the outset."

A partner with truly in-house global coverage can get you operating in your new markets seamlessly, quickly and with minimal fuss. And that may turn out to be the best decision for your NewCo in the long run - because life moves pretty fast, and you can't leave a single piece of compliance to chance.

TMF Group's QuickStart: to Carve-Outs makes it quicker and easier to form global, compliant and fully operational NewCos following a carve-out. Discover more.

The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.