KKR’s $5.7 billion agreement to acquire Integer Holdings closed a strategic review that started back in April. The medtech manufacturer’s board ran the process. Advisors ran the numbers. Lawyers ran the paperwork. All of that discipline is standard for a deal this size.
Here’s what isn’t standard, at least not yet: the same discipline applied to who runs the business on day one of ownership, and how that leadership team is built, sequenced, and supported through the transition.
Most acquirers treat this as a post-close problem. Get the deal signed, then figure out management. That ordering is backwards, and it’s expensive.
Leadership planning belongs inside the M&A process, not after it
Every synergy assumption, every growth thesis, every timeline in a deal model depends on someone executing it. If the leadership plan isn’t built alongside the deal thesis, you’re valuing a business run by people who haven’t been identified, evaluated, or aligned yet. That’s not a minor gap. It’s a hole in the valuation itself.
Diligence teams model revenue, cost structure, and integration risk in detail. Few model the leadership bench with the same rigor. Who stays. Who’s ready to step up. Who needs to be recruited before close, not after. Treating that as a separate workstream from deal execution is how good acquisitions turn into slow ones.
Have the plan before the deal closes, not after
By the time a transaction like this one is announced, the clock on performance has already started. Employees, customers, and suppliers are all watching for signals about what changes and what doesn’t. An acquirer that shows up post-close still deciding on its leadership structure has already lost weeks it can’t get back.
The plan doesn’t need every seat filled before signing. It needs a clear point of view: who’s confirmed, who’s being evaluated, and what the first 100 days of leadership actually look like. That point of view has to exist before the ink dries, not get assembled in the scramble afterward.
Execute from day one, not day one hundred
New ownership creates a narrow window where people are paying close attention and waiting for direction. Waste that window on internal leadership debates and you spend the next year trying to rebuild the credibility you could have kept.
Day one execution means the leadership team knows its mandate, the organization knows who’s in charge of what, and the integration plan is already running, not still being drafted. That requires the leadership work to have been done in parallel with the deal, not launched after the signature.
Deals like KKR-Integer will keep getting announced. The ones that deliver on their thesis will be the ones where leadership planning was treated as part of the transaction, not a follow-up task. That distinction determines whether the next 100 days build momentum or burn it.
