For Strategic Acquirers

A carved-out business is not a clean balance sheet.

A strategic acquirer integrating a carve-out inherits a TSA, not a company. The seller drafted the service catalog. The seller priced it. The seller wrote the exit ramp. By the time the integration management office sees the contract, the leverage has already moved. Buyer-side TSA advisory closes that gap. Senior team in week one. Specific edits, specific counterproposals, specific numbers.

The Strategic Buyer TSA Challenge

The integration plan met the seller's TSA.

Corporate development closes the deal. Integration assumes a clean handoff inside 12 to 18 months. Six months in, the TSA is consuming integration capacity, the seller is invoicing extension fees the deal team did not model, and the buyer's CIO is running on infrastructure no one inside the building controls. The integration plan slips, the value case slips with it.

A Big 4 integration practice will sell you a 14 week assessment. You do not have 14 weeks. You need a buyer-side specialist who knows the playbook the seller is using, knows the numbers other strategics pay, and can sit across the governance committee on Monday.

  1. i.

    Pre-signing.

    Service catalog pressure test during diligence. Pricing benchmarks against comparable strategic deals. Exit clause rewrite before signature so the integration plan and the TSA exit ramp finally line up.

  2. ii.

    Day One.

    90 day operational readiness across IT, finance, HR, procurement, treasury and cybersecurity. The buyer-side counterweight to the seller's transition office. The Day One that holds.

  3. iii.

    Mid-TSA.

    Exit acceleration when the integration milestone is at risk. Renegotiation when cost-plus inflation has pushed pricing past the original case. SLA enforcement when service credits are sitting unclaimed.

  4. iv.

    Pre exit and integration close.

    Stranded cost analysis. Final cutover. Vendor handoff into the buyer's environment. The clean ending that lets the integration management office stand the team down.

  5. v.

    Cross-border, multiple jurisdictions.

    Where the carve-out spans entities in three or more countries, payroll, tax, data residency and benefits each require a separate exit. We run the cross-border workstream alongside the central program.

Documentary view of a strategic acquirer's integration office reviewing a TSA
How We Work With Strategics

Six engagement points. Every part of the TSA lifecycle.

Strategic acquirers call us at different points in the deal. Diligence, Day One, mid-TSA, pre exit, or across multiple active integrations. The work is built around the integration management office, not a parallel consulting workstream.

01

Pre-signing TSA review

Diligence stage assessment of the TSA the seller is presenting. Service catalog stress test. Pricing benchmarks against comparable strategic deals. Exit clause leverage memo to corporate development.

02

Day One readiness program

90 day operational stand-up across six workstreams. Built to integrate into the buyer's existing IMO governance, not replace it.

03

TSA renegotiation

When cost-plus inflation has pushed pricing past the original deal case. Catalog rationalization, pricing reset, exit ramp rebuild. 6 to 10 weeks, fixed fee.

04

Mid-TSA exit acceleration

When integration is behind plan and the seller is invoicing extension fees. Workstream rebuild, extension fee minimization, weekly cadence with the seller's transition lead.

05

SLA and dispute resolution

Service level breach claims, service credit recovery, governance reset, escalation. The remedies in the contract that the buyer has not been collecting.

06

Reverse TSA advisory

When the buyer carries services for the seller after close. Reverse TSA scoping, pricing, exit clauses and governance. The mirror image of the inbound TSA, built buyer-side.

Outcomes

What strategic buyers have achieved across the lifecycle.

Anonymized results from prior engagements. Full case studies available on request under NDA.

$3.6M
Strategic · Industrial

Cost-plus reset, mid-TSA

$8M annual TSA with cost-plus 32 percent mark-up. Catalog rationalization and benchmark reset moved the run rate before the integration milestone. Saved over the remaining 14 months.

0
Strategic · Healthcare

Day One on close, no extension

18 month TSA at $1.1M monthly run rate. 90 day readiness program landed Day One on the close date. Zero extension fees paid across the life of the agreement.

$5.4M
Strategic · Software

SLA credits recovered in 8 weeks

24 month TSA. Repeated SLA breaches across four service families. Built the claim file, ran the escalation, recovered credits the buyer had not invoiced.

For Strategic Buyers

Integration timelines. Big 4 will not match them.

Fixed fee proposal in 48 hours. Senior team on day one. The first conversation is always free.