AI and Dealmaking Roundtable

Insider Media

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is transforming dealmaking with speed, insights and opportunities. It’s allowing M&A professionals to become “sticky advisors” - working with clients well before and after deals have been struck and helping them improve business longer term. And this is just the start… Insider drew together some leaders in dealmaking to its Birmingham office to discuss the issues in a round table sponsored by Virtual Vaults to see how we get the best, and avoid the worst of AI in M&A. We looked at the challenges AI brings in terms of accuracy, reliability and credibility; the new skills are needed to make the best of the technology; how quickly it's developing; and the strategies to get the most out of AI, for both dealmakers and their clients.

Transcript

00:00Hi, I'm Kurt Jacobs, the editor of Midlands Business Insider, and we've just done a round

00:15table where I brought together a dozen of leading dealmakers from across the Midlands

00:19to look at the impact that artificial intelligence and data are having on mergers and acquisitions.

00:26It's been a fascinating discussion. We've looked at the issues such as the immediate

00:30benefits that AI is going to bring, the benefits it's going to bring to customers and clients

00:36like you, and also how the sector needs to skill up to really get the best out of this

00:42technology. Let's speak to some of the participants.

00:46My name is Jeroen Krijthof, CEO and founder of Virtual Vaults. We just had a remarkable

00:50round table session about dealmaking in the future, and it's all about vision, using the

00:55right tools, combine it with the right virtual data rooms, and you take it from there. Look

00:59at your processes, do a little scoping, and then a proof of concept.

01:05Hi, I'm Geraint Regan. I'm from Breeze Corporate Finance. When it comes to technology, and

01:10in particular AI, we are seeing some effect of that in M&A transactions to date, but I

01:15think over the next few years, it's going to have a huge impact on the whole M&A industry,

01:20whether it be from sourcing deals to actually executing deals, and I think particularly

01:25in terms of taking things to that next stage in terms of that predictive analytics and

01:30working through things such as integration and execution, etc.

01:34I'm Amanda Betts. I'm from ProVantage Corporate Finance, and the impact on the AI is having

01:39on dealmaking is giving us access to a wider range of buyers for our clients in a more

01:45efficient way.

01:47Emmett Keating from Headpoint Advisors. I think that we see a lot of impact of AI and

01:52digital tech stack on making our deals more efficient lately. We're continually evaluating

01:59the tools we use, and I think we see quite a lot of improvement in the initial phases.

02:04The market research, the market mapping, the identifying of comparable deals is all super

02:09quick, and getting our team up to speed on that has been a real benefit in recent years.

02:16Harry Walker from DiveScope of Watts. I think the biggest impact we're seeing from digital

02:21technology on dealmaking at the moment is around AI, in particular around research,

02:27buyers, and market mapping. The best thing we've found is actually for international

02:32buyers. AI can cut through international languages in a way that we can't as conventional

02:38researchers, so that's where we're seeing the most help at the moment.

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