A well thought out mergers-and-acquisitions (M&A) strategy can be a source of competitive advantage and is an important part of any company's long-term value-creation plan. With more and more companies beginning to take a more thorough systematic look at their corporate portfolios, divestitures—the selling off of pieces of the portfolio—are quickly rising to the top of the corporate agenda. This is more so when a company is pursuing opportunities for growth in uncertain situations. In such situations, joint ventures and alliances have become an increasingly important—and complex—part of corporate strategy.

M&A strategies involve regularly identifying attractive growth avenues through a carefully developed long-term value-creation plan and management of the end-to-end transaction process, from target screening to final integration.

Divestitures involves systematically taking a look at a company’s corporate portfolio to ascertain the businesses  that no longer fit within the company’s strategic agenda and coming up with a strategy for selling them off.

Alliances and joint ventures include defining the strategic rationale of a partnership, identifying its appropriate organizational and governance structures, and managing it stringently to achieve the desired goals.