AI and natural language understanding (NLU) expand M&A margins

Company Profile

An investment bank dedicated to creating a world in which everyone has the opportunity to pursue a personal purpose. Its M&A practice focuses on privately-held, lower middle market companies with revenue between 10 and 150 million dollars. The team collaborates with the founders of privately-held companies who are often near retirement as well as stakeholders of municipalities and public entities in order to create custom solutions for a range of transactions.

Scope Highlights

• M&A due diligence
• Confidential Information Memorandum (CIM)
• Krista AI and Natural Language Understanding (NLU)
• Public data sources such as social networks, podcasts, digital documents

Challenge

The target market for investment bank M&A services team has 150,000+ companies. However, because private-market transactions are infrequent, specific information is hard to find. As a result, the banker’s team needed to perform time-consuming specialized research and analysis. Leadership sought to automate a new financial product that could use publicly available information to generate insights on a particular company and compile an assessment for use by potential acquirers.

Solution

The automation uses a combination of AI and Natural Language Understanding tools to identify who to call, who to call back and how much to pay. On the buy-side, Natural Language Understanding functionality reviews Confidential Information Memorandum (CIM) in minutes to eliminate companies that do not fit prospective buyers’ criteria. On the sell-side, AI uses public data sources (e.g., social networks, podcasts, digital documents) to identify connections between companies, the firm and prospective buyers.