When we met with Cogent’s CEO, Rick Murphy, we were intrigued by what we considered a fair and balanced package to help us embark on a journey of adding M&A to our growth strategy. Our goal was to speed up growth on top of our solid organic strategy while deepening our geographic market penetration. Cogent’s analysis of TNS to align these goals with the proper candidate criteria and determine what we could afford was expert assistant we were glad to receive.
TNS was not just looking for someone to feed us with potential candidates and take it from there. What we found in Cogent was IT industry M&A expertise to help vet candidates, model fair deals, and lead us to the finish line in closing a suitable transaction. That pot was sweetened in Cogent also providing industry specific transaction documentation and templates as well as expert negotiation, due diligence, and project management. Buyers and sellers certainly both benefit from how the Cogent team navigates and provides thought leadership throughout the process, often being instrumental in creating a neutral line so a deal can proceed beyond a potential impasse.
Could TNS do this all ourselves with our attorney and other advisors? I think we could, but M&A would be much more expensive, very time consuming, and difficult to get past sticking points in negotiations. Cogent’s industry deal experience makes it significantly faster and allows my team to do what they do best inside of the transaction process as well as their day jobs. Since closing a deal with Cogent’s help, I would consider not having them on our team penny wise and pound foolish.
