Cornerstone Advisors - Mergers & Acquisitions

Backed by an expansive portfolio of merger and acquisition projects, Cornerstone understands the intricacies of merging organizational cultures, people, technology, operations and more. Our multi-disciplinary M&A experts bring years of senior-level experience across every major functional area of bank and credit union operations. They will work shoulder-to-shoulder with your internal teams, managing every facet of your merger to ensure your bank or credit union derives the expected value from the transaction.

Services

Customized M&A Solutions

Our M&A experts have the knowledge to help you navigate throughout the full merger lifecycle, from merger advisory and due diligence to a complex merger technology integration:

Merger Advisory

Due Diligence: Cornerstone’s broad-based strategy, technology, and operations consulting practice combined with our vast network of business relationships will assist your organization in finding potential candidates for a merger, acquisition, or joint venture partnership. We can help you perform the necessary due diligence to ensure that the resulting strategic and operational synergies are in the best long-term interest of your organization.

Post Merger Integration Planning: Once a deal is struck, we assist you with post-merger integration planning and strategy development in order to achieve strategic and operational synergies. Your team will be able to draw upon our deep expertise and intellectual property gained through years of post-merger integration experience. The scope includes operational and business best practices customized for the newly combined larger organization, technology conversion, vendor oversight support, HR/organizational design, and communications planning and execution.

Merger Integration Services

With every merger or acquisition comes a maze of organizational and cultural dynamics that must be expertly navigated. These challenges are further heightened by highly complex technology integration initiatives that must be addressed, all without disrupting service to customer and members.

Cornerstone has worked with hundreds of banks and credit unions to ensure the smoothest possible integration solutions. We deliver the leadership and tools necessary to help create an "integration mindset" for a successful merger.

Our proven process is focused on 3 key fundamentals:

1. The design of a change management architecture and facilitation of your merger integration teams

2. Providing hands-on assistance with system selection, technology conversions, process, and organization design

3. Helping the new organization implement operational best practices

Merger Contract Negotiation Services

When two organizations come together, there inevitably will be ‘onerous’ contracts in the mix between both institutions. Contracts will need to be terminated, liquidated damages need to be validated and negotiated where possible and new agreements must be established. Without the proper due diligence and the necessary market intel, your organization could risk significant delays in achieving its targeted financial goals.

Cornerstone can deliver a merger negotiation strategy and lead you through all aspects of contract evaluations, product selections, and negotiation of final contracts. We have negotiated contracts with nearly every vendor in the financial services space, including core, digital, card, teller/platform, fraud, CRM, imaging content management, ATM/ITM and many other systems.

Target Operating Model (TOM) Design

Cornerstone can help you establish data-driven staffing benchmarks for economies of scale. We offer comprehensive TOM design for specific units or entire institutions, covering product, process, organization, and technology.

Technology Conversion

Our hands-on experience with hundreds of core and ancillary system conversion and implementations will enable you to avoid setbacks and pitfalls in a complex M&A conversion. We will also identify where you can achieve economies of scale through process redesign, organizational alignment, and automation.

Change Management

Our knowledge of change management in communications, organizational design, education/learning, and employee engagement will position you to retain top talent and increase staff performance.

Third-Party Oversight

We monitor and report on not only your institution and core vendor progress against plan, but also third-party vendors critical to conversion success.

Platforms & Tools

Powered by Data

As with all our complex engagements such as an M&A transaction, we will leverage our proprietary data “vaults”—including Contract Vault™ , Performance Vault™ and Vendor Vault™—to identify value creation opportunities. We tap into thousands of data points and benchmarks to help your organization achieve vendor cost savings, improve operational efficiencies and successfully manage vendors.

Contract Vault™ is our proprietary data engine of over 15,000 pricing points collected from negotiating thousands of vendor contracts. Leveraging this information, our team of negotiators provides financial services executives with an objective analysis of market pricing and how it shifts with size, volume, and contract length.

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Vendor Vault™ is our powerful, yet easy to use vendor management platform for ongoing vendor monitoring. It was specifically designed to help you stay on track and ensure you pass your exams. Vendor Vault™, provides data on hundreds of industry vendors serving the financial service market.

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Performance Vault™ puts peer performance metrics at your fingertips and provides you with real-time analytics and insights to help you make data-driven decisions. It features more than 1000 productivity, revenue, and efficiency benchmarks that will enable you to drive high-performance levels across your entire enterprise.

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Quintin Sykes

Partner

Quintin Sykes leads Cornerstone's merger and acquisition (M&A) and enterprise program delivery efforts and has over 35 years of technology and operations experience in financial services companies. His prior consulting practice leadership roles include president of Crescent Consulting Group, LLC, and VP/community of practice leader for Hitachi Consulting’s U.S. Financial Services Practice.

Mary Eyre

Principal

Mary Eyre leads a strategic team, drives business expansion, fosters client relationships, and innovates our service offerings to align with market demands. Mary’s in-depth understanding of the intricacies of the financial service sector, coupled with her strategic acumen, has enabled her to navigate the challenges inherent in merger integrations and large business transformations while identifying and capitalizing on opportunities for growth and synergy.

Mergers & Acquisitions

The Experience You Need for M&A Success

Featured M&A Engagements

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