How M&A Turns a Chemical Company Into a Tech Business

Chandradev Mehta, SVP Strategy and Business Development at Hexion Inc.

Chandradev Mehta, SVP Strategy and Business Development at Hexion Inc., breaks down how a commodity chemical company uses M&A to transform into a technology-enabled, chemistry-as-a-service business. He covers the acquisition of an AI and MarTech company, the build vs. buy vs. partner decision framework, integration planning discipline, banker selection, small deal execution, and JV governance.

What You'll Learn

• How to build a genuine build vs. buy vs. partner framework and when each is right
• Why buying a commercialized or near-commercialized business changes your risk profile in ways that building from scratch can't (and never will)
• How Chandradev structures must-believes to maintain valuation discipline in competitive processes
• Why integration planning needs to start at IOI, not post-close
• What separates a banker worth your time from one running a numbers game
• Why small deals are frequently harder to execute than large ones (and how to protect against organizational deprioritization)
• How to negotiate JV governance before you need to unwind it

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This episode is sponsored by DealRoom

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Episode Chapters

[00:00] Introduction

[04:41] From Investment Banking to the Principal Side

[10:24] Using M&A to Transform Hexion

[11:01] Build vs. Buy vs. Partner Framework

[16:42] What Chemistry as a Service Actually Means

[23:43] Sourcing Deals: Push and Pull Model

[26:24] What Makes a Banker Actually Useful

[29:12] Valuation Discipline and Must-Believes

[36:21] Environmental Risk in Chemical Deals

[36:46] Why Small Deals Are Harder Than They Look

[41:21] Joint Ventures: Negotiate the Divorce First

[43:25] Execution Principles and Stakeholder Alignment

[47:08] Getting Deals Actionable