Getting M&A ready

LDF completed its first acquisition, Blockbusters, in May 2025, around six months before I joined as CEO. I stepped into a business already on the other side of that process, inheriting both the opportunity it had created and the lessons it had generated.

What follows is an honest account of what I’ve learned, from what the team lived through, from navigating the post-acquisition period myself, and from the support YFM provided throughout. If you’re a founder thinking about your first acquisition, I hope it saves you some of the harder lessons.

The most consistent theme that comes up when we talk about the Blockbusters acquisition is the importance of cultural due diligence – and how easy it is to underweight it against the financial and commercial analysis.

Understanding what makes a target company tick, its values, its leadership style, the unwritten rules that govern how people work, is not a nice-to-have. It’s fundamental to whether the acquisition creates the value you’re expecting. The numbers tell you what a business is worth. The culture tells you whether you can run it well.

If I could change one thing about the Blockbusters process, it would be to go deeper on the people and HR due diligence earlier. Not because the fundamentals weren’t there, they were, but because a more thorough, deeper assessment – right down to the individual level, giving us far more granularity than you might think necessary – would have given us an even clearer map of the integration challenges ahead and the hidden potential waiting to be unlocked.

One thing that catches many acquirers off guard, and it certainly applied here, is the sheer operational weight of the post-acquisition period. The deal completing is not the finish line. In many ways, it’s the starting gun.

Getting your post-acquisition accounting right from day one is non-negotiable. It sounds basic, but the complexity of consolidating two sets of books, particularly when there are legacy systems involved, is routinely underestimated. Build in proper support from the outset. Don’t assume it will sort itself out.

The same principle applies to integration planning more broadly. We use the phrase “100-day plan” a lot in M&A circles, and it’s a genuinely useful framework, but only if it’s built with real specificity, shared clearly with both teams, and treated as a living document rather than a one-time exercise. Having YFM’s experience and challenge through that process was something we leaned on more than I expected. It kept us honest when the temptation was to move too fast.

There’s a temptation, especially when you’ve identified synergies and you’re under pressure to demonstrate value creation, to move quickly on implementing your own systems, processes, and ways of working into the acquired business.

Resist it.

The business you’ve acquired has almost certainly done things in ways that don’t match your own. Some of those differences will need to change. But some of them are the reason the business was attractive to you in the first place. Take the time to look, listen, and learn before you push. The cost of moving too fast, in cultural damage, in employee uncertainty, in loss of the very capabilities you paid for – is real.

M&A takes longer, costs more energy, and creates more internal pressure than most people anticipate. The risk of taking your eye off your own business during an acquisition process is significant, your core organisation is still growing, still facing its own challenges, still needing leadership. Don’t let the acquisition become the only thing you’re focused on.

Build a team around the process. Be clear about who owns what. And communicate relentlessly, with your own people, with the acquired team, and with your PE partner. The businesses that integrate well are almost always the ones where communication was treated as a priority, not an afterthought.

Don’t be afraid of the tough decisions. If the due diligence has identified something that needs to be addressed, a structural issue, a people question, a cost that needs to come out, address it early. Delaying difficult decisions in a post-acquisition environment rarely makes them easier. It usually makes them harder.

Over the next few weeks, Lee will be sharing one more pieces from his experience at LDF: What I’d tell any founder considering PE for the first time, an outward-facing piece for any founder weighing up whether PE backing is right for them.

No jargon. No theory. Just honest insight from someone who’s been through it.

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