Several deals, one plan: Buy and Build in AtlanticM&A
AtlanticM&A4 min read
A platform strategy is several deals and one plan. Each acquisition is integrated on its own, with its own team, Day 1 and TSA. Then the question changes. It is no longer whether this deal is integrated, but whether the platform is delivering the plan the deals were bought for.
Buy and Build is how AtlanticM&A handles that moment.
Two ways on from an integration
When an integration is done, there are two ways forward, depending on whether one deal becomes the plan or several deals come under one plan.
- Continue as Value Creation. The same project becomes the value creation plan. Everything it holds carries over, including its people, its LBO model and its earnout, and its synergies become benefits. Value creation phases are added after the integration's own, with a hold of three, five or seven years.
- Add to a Buy and Build. The integration is added to a new or existing Buy and Build, which is a value creation project. Several deals, one plan.
An integration or a buy-side divestiture can join a Buy and Build. A Buy and Build is the buyer's platform, so a sell-side divestiture cannot join one, though it can still continue as value creation.
What happens when a deal is added
The deal becomes read-only history, linked to the plan. Nothing it recorded is lost: its work plan, its decisions and its RAID log stay exactly as the team left them. It also stops counting toward your project limit.
Its Earnout Ledger stays live. A deal can be finished as an integration while its earnout still has years to run, so each deal's figures are still entered, corrected and closed, period by period, inside the Buy and Build. The family is archived together, and an open earnout keeps running on an archived deal until it is settled.
A divestiture needs every TSA service exited before it can be added. Adding a deal cannot be undone, and it needs the owner of both projects, or an account owner or admin. Only an account owner or admin can start a new Buy and Build from a deal.
One platform, three deals, one plan
The Working with projects page draws it over three periods:
- Two integrations are under way.
- Deals A and B are added to a new Buy and Build, and Deal C's integration starts.
- Deal C is added to the same Buy and Build.
By period 3 the platform has one value creation plan, three deals kept as history and three earnouts still tracked.
What it looks like
The film below uses the Value Creation sandbox. Two finished integrations are already in its Buy and Build, and a third, Kestrel, is added in the film with its earnout still live.
You can do the same yourself: start the 14-day trial, open the Value Creation sandbox and add Kestrel to its Buy and Build.
What it does not do yet
Adding a deal links it to the plan and keeps its record. It does not merge the deal's figures into the plan's value bridge: the plan's own LBO model feeds that bridge. A consolidated model across every deal in a platform is the next step, and I want to build it with the first customers running a platform this way.
Why it matters
On most platforms the integration record of the first deal is gone by the third. The advisers who ran it have left, the files are in someone's drive, and the earnout is being argued from memory. A Buy and Build keeps every deal's record in one place, under the plan it was bought for, with each earnout tracked until its final period.
The next deal does not have to start from scratch either. Save an integration as a template before it joins the Buy and Build, and the next deal starts from its shape.
About AtlanticM&A
AtlanticM&A is the Agentic Transformation OS. Its agents work inside the programme, both augmenting and automating the work of the transformation team: work plans, governance, stakeholders and reporting in one place, with a live value bridge that moves as the work does. It is a system of work rather than only being a system of record: the charter is written in it and the plan is built in it. Meeting notes come back as proposed updates to the plan and the RAID log, the team decides what stands, and every change the AI makes carries an audit trail. The platform does the slide-building, status reporting and stakeholder briefings that usually keep a consulting pyramid busy, so a small senior team can run the programme more nimbly and for less.