M&A Science

Bill Stone, Founder and CEO of SS&C

How do you keep buying companies without eventually losing control of the company you built? 
SS&C Technologies founder and CEO Bill Stone has spent four decades avoiding exactly that. Rather than treating each acquisition as an isolated transaction, SS&C built a system around protecting ownership, using debt when the economics make sense, paying it down quickly, and creating enough value after close to preserve capacity for the next deal.
Bill walks through the decisions behind acquisitions including FMC, GlobeOp, and Blue Prism, his experience taking SS&C private with Carlyle, and the discipline that has allowed the company to keep acquiring across changing markets.
What You'll Learn
How Bill Stone kept 15% of SS&C through 100 acquisitions
The exact revenue-per-head and EBITDA thresholds SS&C screens for
Why strategic buyers almost always outbid private equity
How to tell a motivated seller from one just fishing for a premium
When rollover equity can help retain the management team
How Carlyle overruled Stone's own unanimous board vote
The one rule that makes Stone walk from a deal every time
 

Every financing decision changes what you can do on the next deal. If you're financing an acquisition and don't have a hard leverage ceiling you actually stick to, DealPilot, powered by M&A Science, has the deal guidance layer to help you set one before you're over-levered on the next deal.
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This episode of M&A Science is presented by DealRoom.
DealRoom is the AI-powered operating system for Buyer-Led M&A™ — one connected system for pipeline, diligence, integration, and reporting. No tool-switching, no manual updates, no data gaps.
See how it works: https://hubs.ly/Q04mcGKy0
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Episode Chapters
[00:00] Intro and Guest Bio Check
[04:27] Protecting Ownership From Bankers
[07:32] Pivoting to the Buy Side
[12:12] Cutting a Client's Cost 91%
[12:32] Technology Cycles From Excel to AI
[15:14] First Acquisition and Going Public
[16:26] Balancing Investors and Founder Control
[20:08] The Carlyle Take-Private Story
[27:23] Screening Deals and Cutting Costs Fast
[32:02] Reading a Seller's True Motivation
[35:29] Winning FMC Under Canadian Rules
[42:10] Beating TPG for GlobeOp
[45:22] The Leverage Ceiling and Debt Paydown
[49:06] Topping Vista for Blue Prism
[53:17] Walking Away From a Lying Seller
[54:23] Diligence Speed and Trust But Verify
[54:58] Valuations and Capital Abundance

Aaron Binstock, Partner, Co-Head of Private Equity Practice at Cooley LLP
AI can now draft, review, and benchmark deal documents in a fraction of the time it used to take, but knowing when to trust the output is a different skill entirely.
Aaron Binstock, a partner at Cooley with nearly 20 years of transactional experience, has seen both sides of that tradeoff firsthand.
Where does AI actually save time on a deal, and where does it create false confidence? What happened when a client's AI-generated tax step chart was built on the wrong assumption? How does reverse prompting produce a better first draft than a single one-shot prompt? And what's changing about how junior lawyers build judgment, and how firms bill for their time?
What You'll Learn
Where AI reliably speeds up NDA markups versus bespoke merger agreements
How reverse prompting turns a mediocre AI output into a usable first draft
The tax step chart mistake that nearly cost a client millions in consideration or tax
How cross-deal benchmarking pulls survival periods, caps, and baskets into one reference chart
Why some clients and counterparties are opting out of AI entirely, and how firms track it
What junior lawyer training looks like once document grinding stops teaching judgment
Why AI can produce a report but still can't own the result
 

If you're dealing with AI tools that sound confident but don't actually know M&A, DealPilot, powered by M&A Science experiential data, has guidance built from practitioners who've actually run the deal to help you catch what AI can't see coming.
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The Buyer-Led M&A™ Summit is back
August 18th, free and virtual. We're releasing the State of AI in M&A 2026 report live at the event before it goes public. Benchmark your program, hear from practitioners across the industry, and leave with a clearer picture of where dealmaking is headed.
Register here: https://hubs.ly/Q04kBhzV0
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Episode Chapters
[00:00] Intro
[03:12] Aaron's Path Into M&A
[05:12] Cooley's Public AI Commitment
[07:22] Where AI Fits On A Deal
[11:37] Quality Control And AI Playbooks
[16:33] The Tax Step Chart Mistake
[18:41] How Reverse Prompting Works
[22:19] Benchmarking Past Deals With AI
[23:13] Lockbox Pricing And Prompt Quality
[25:33] When Clients Say No To AI
[33:06] AI's Impact On Legal Billing
[35:44] Training Lawyers In The AI Era
[42:20] Why AI Can't Own The Deal
[44:07] Craziest Moments In M&A Deals

Jennifer Lipschultz, Sr. Director Merger & Acquisition Integration and Corporate Project Management

Due diligence covers deal terms, but it doesn't cover what happens once you're running payroll, benefits, and banking in a country you've never operated in before. A legal entity change can lock a company out of its own bank account overnight. Benefits plans get frozen in by local law. A language rollout can hit five systems on the same go-live day. And having handled one acquisition in a country doesn't guarantee the next one plays out the same way.
Jennifer Lipschultz has led integration on more than 20 acquisitions across the Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, and India for ECI Software Solutions, a PE-backed SMB software company operating in 80 countries.  
If your next acquisition involves operating somewhere new, this is the walkthrough to have ready before you find yourself improvising in real time.
What You'll Learn
Why a legal entity change can freeze a company out of its own bank account
How Swedish per diem rules can turn expense reimbursements into taxable income
What actually goes into a change engagement session, and why managers get briefed first
How one go-live day can trigger a five-system language rollout
Why fluency in one acquisition doesn't guarantee the next
What belongs on a pre-close global integration checklist
If you're dealing with a cross-border acquisition where the back office keeps breaking in ways diligence never caught, DealPilot, powered by M&A Science, has integration playbooks pulled from practitioners running 20-plus deals, to help you build your pre-close checklist before the surprises hit instead of after.
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The Buyer-Led M&A™ Summit is back
August 18th, free and virtual. We're releasing the State of AI in M&A 2026 report live at the event before it goes public. Benchmark your program, hear from practitioners across the industry, and leave with a clearer picture of where dealmaking is headed.
Register here: https://hubs.ly/Q04kBhzV0
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Episode Chapters
[00:00] Introduction and Guest Background
[03:05] From Engineering to Global Integration
[06:20] What Full Absorption Really Means
[08:17] The Pre-Close Integration Playbook
[13:41] What Breaks First Abroad
[15:49] When English Fluency Is Assumed
[20:21] A Same-Day Language Rollout
[22:07] Locked Out of a Bank Account
[24:35] Sweden's Expense Reporting Maze
[27:59] Harmonizing Benefits Across Borders
[34:09] Running a Change Engagement Session
[42:30] Earning Trust With Senior Leadership
[44:19] Finding Risk in the Data Room
[46:36] A Pre-Close Global Checklist
[48:56] Lessons From Walking the Floor

Derek Liu, M&A Partner at Baker McKenzie

AI talent deals are no longer small acquihires built around a simple price per engineer. Some now carry billion-dollar price tags, forcing buyers to rethink deal structure, diligence, tax exposure, and retention.
Baker McKenzie's M&A Partner Derek Liu has personally signed over $110 billion in transactions from both sides of the table. That mismatch, old tools built for a different kind of deal, is what's forcing corp dev and legal teams to rework their playbook, and it's the throughline of this conversation.
What You'll Learn
The real cost difference between a stock purchase, an asset sale, and a sign and release
What acquirers are actually diligencing when the product isn't the point
Why a non-solicit clause outweighs a non-compete in California
How a 100 percent revest changes the conversation with a founder
Where HR becomes the bottleneck between LOI and close


If you're structuring retention for a talent-driven acquisition, DealPilot, powered by M&A Science, has the deal guidance layer to help you get the revesting schedule and non-solicit right before you sign.
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This episode of M&A Science is presented by DealRoom.
The Buyer-Led M&A™ Summit is back. August 18th, free and virtual. We're releasing the State of AI in M&A 2026 report live at the event before it goes public. Benchmark your program, hear from practitioners across the industry, and leave with a clearer picture of where dealmaking is headed. Register here.
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Episode Chapters
[00:00] Introduction
[00:03:03] From New York to Silicon Valley
[00:11:58] Why Acquihire Prices Exploded
[00:15:19] Defining an Acquihire Deal
[00:25:20] Winding Down the Acquihire Business
[00:31:35] Acquihire Due Diligence on Talent
[00:34:10] Why Not Just Poach Talent
[00:38:34] RSUs, Revesting, and Rollover Equity
[00:46:37] Valuing the Biggest Acquihire Deals
[00:47:35] An Acquihire Deal Timeline
[00:56:22] The Craziest Deal in M&A

Andrew Morbitzer, VP of Corporate Development, Life360 (ASX: 360)

Your standard teaser tells a buyer everything about your company and nothing about why you fit their strategy right now. When sellers expect the buyer to figure out that alignment, the deal dies on the desk.
Andrew Morbitzer has led more than $2 billion in acquisitions at Intuit and GoDaddy, worked on the sell-side as an M&A advisor, and returned to the buy-side as VP of Corporate Development at Life360.
What You'll Learn
Why do corp dev teams default to no on inbound deals before the first conversation
How banker incentives and buyer incentives point in opposite directions
How to research a buyer's strategy and priorities using only public information
What a realistic projection signals to a corp dev leader versus what a hockey stick signals
How to apply Buyer-Led M&A™ thinking from the sell side

If you're advising on deals and want a framework for how buyers actually evaluate fit, DealPilot, powered by M&A Science, has Buyer-Led M&A™ frameworks to help you pitch into the buyer's strategy instead of handing them a data sheet.
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This episode of M&A Science is presented by DealRoom.
DealRoom just launched the only MCP server built for Buyer-Led M&A™ — so your AI and your deal data finally work together. Connect Claude, ChatGPT, or Copilot directly to DealRoom and let your AI read your pipeline, analyze due diligence documents, and automatically write findings back. 
See for yourself: dealroom.net/mcp
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Episode Chapters
[00:00] Introduction
[07:12] Why Inbound Deals Rarely Fit
[09:40] Rationalization Over Strategy
[10:01] The Inbound Problem Is Not Just About Bankers
[15:43] When a Bank Actually Does the Work
[18:12] The Banker's Incentive Problem
[20:51] How to Actually Land the Pitch
[22:12] Cash Flow and Finance Partnership
[24:53] First-Hand Research on the Buyer
[29:42] How Detailed to Get on Value Creation
[34:30] What a Misaligned Banker Actually Costs You
[37:50] Cold Outreach vs. Warm Relationships
[40:45] Moves That Accelerate Trust
[43:07] Applying Buyer-Led M&A on the Sell Side
[42:48] The Year One Mistake That Bit Us
[46:12] Assessing Culture Fit Before Close