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M&A is the market and professional practice of combining, buying and selling companies and business units — from origination and valuation through due diligence, financing, documentation and closing.
People say “M&A” the way they say “capital markets”: it is the arena in which mergers and acquisitions happen, the advisor industry that runs auctions, and the legal-financial work that turns a handshake into a transfer of shares or assets.
It is not a single statute. Competition authorities (for example EU merger control) police overlaps. IFRS 3 tells acquirers how to account for a business combination after the fact. IVS tells valuers how to estimate value. None of those documents is the deal itself.
Illustration only. Hypothetical European industrial group, not a live mandate.
A family owns 100% of a €35m-revenue components business. They run a structured sale: 18 strategic buyers and 12 financial buyers see a teaser; six submit IOIs; three complete diligence. Headline enterprise value is €48m on €7.5m adjusted EBITDA (6.4x). After net debt and a working-capital chip, equity value is €41m. That entire path is “an M&A process.” A merger of equals with a peer would be M&A too — different documents, same industry label.
M&A succeeds when price, certainty, people and structure fit. It fails when teasers over-claim EBITDA, when buyers cannot finance, or when social issues (who runs the combined company) were never priced.
Business sale; carve-outs; LBO; bolt-ons; public takeovers (a regulated subset).
Calling every growth conversation “M&A” dilutes the term. Minority growth equity is capital raising with optional governance rights, not always a change-of-control. Cross-border files add tax, FX and FDI screening that a domestic share sale never sees.
Dazur is built so the same structured file — financials, documents, valuation, buyer map — can feed a sell-side process, a buy-side screen and a diligence Q&A without rebuilding the data room for each advisor.