Corporate Development and Strategy

Corporate development is the execution of strategy, the result of financial, structural and operational planning.  Middle-market companies tend to have grown beyond their founder's vision and so are ready to be sold; and larger companies tend to be buyers, the result of their own strategy to grow via acquisition rather than internally.  Private equity sponsors know that equity-incentivized managers generally implement the fastest, most profitable growth of all.

Even large firms sometimes need an outside viewpoint, especially when senior employees themselves are the subject of discussion, or when a project they have championed is the focus of evaluation.  We provide objective, tempered judgment based on experience in a variety of structured and entrepreneurial endeavors.

The Essence of Strategy is Differentiation

Differentiated strategy, a seeming oxymoron, is the result of finding sustainable competitive advantage which, of itself, is difficult to perceive and achieve, and even harder to maintain.

For many companies, competitive response is the result merely of intuition or conditioned reflex.  Innovation is quickly recognized by competitors and emulated; novelty is soon outdated.  The development of strategy, by contrast, is deliberate and the result of an iterative process of analysis, proposition, testing and refinement.  Developing strategy is hard work.

Few middle-market companies tend to dominate their industries precisely because the industries themselves are highly fragmented; all are so small that none are able to outgrow the competition, to achieve market leadership and dominance.  An intent to manage prudently often leads to actions that are merely the same as the competition.  The development of a breakout strategy calls for examining and understanding the characteristics of industry structure and the relative position of competitors therein, and recognizing inherent and fundamental differences between competitors.  Simply trying to work harder is not a strategy.

To create sustainable advantage middle-market companies must:

• Preempt competitors by doing things sooner and more effectively.
• Contest every apparent change by competitors.
• Implement every possible incremental improvement, and do so continuously.
• Magnify differentiation; leverage cost advantage; exploit even minor opportunities.

Even minor changes, when taken together, are worthwhile—when the aggregate becomes greater than the sum of the individual parts.

Crallé & Company brings wide-ranging and extensive experience to corporate development, including:

• Development of growth strategies: organic, by joint-venture or acquisition.
• Operations, especially for troubled companies.
• Capital structure and financing (debt and/or equity, restructuring or recapitalization).

You may be interested to see Representative Assignments here.

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Crallé & Company, Incorporated
Bronxville, New York
914-779-3331