The Back-Office Surprises Nobody Warned You About When Going Global

Jennifer Lipschultz, Sr. Director Merger & Acquisition Integration and Corporate Project Management

Due diligence covers deal terms, but it doesn't cover what happens once you're running payroll, benefits, and banking in a country you've never operated in before. A legal entity change can lock a company out of its own bank account overnight. Benefits plans get frozen in by local law. A language rollout can hit five systems on the same go-live day. And having handled one acquisition in a country doesn't guarantee the next one plays out the same way.

Jennifer Lipschultz has led integration on more than 20 acquisitions across the Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, and India for ECI Software Solutions, a PE-backed SMB software company operating in 80 countries.

If your next acquisition involves operating somewhere new, this is the walkthrough to have ready before you find yourself improvising in real time.

What You'll Learn

• Why a legal entity change can freeze a company out of its own bank account
• How Swedish per diem rules can turn expense reimbursements into taxable income
• What actually goes into a change engagement session, and why managers get briefed first
• How one go-live day can trigger a five-system language rollout
• Why fluency in one acquisition doesn't guarantee the next
• What belongs on a pre-close global integration checklist

If you're dealing with a cross-border acquisition where the back office keeps breaking in ways diligence never caught, DealPilot, powered by M&A Science, has integration playbooks pulled from practitioners running 20-plus deals, to help you build your pre-close checklist before the surprises hit instead of after.

____________________

The Buyer-Led M&A™ Summit is back

August 18th, free and virtual. We're releasing the State of AI in M&A 2026 report live at the event before it goes public. Benchmark your program, hear from practitioners across the industry, and leave with a clearer picture of where dealmaking is headed.

Register here: https://hubs.ly/Q04kBhzV0

____________________

Episode Chapters

[00:00] Introduction and Guest Background

[03:05] From Engineering to Global Integration

[06:20] What Full Absorption Really Means

[08:17] The Pre-Close Integration Playbook

[13:41] What Breaks First Abroad

[15:49] When English Fluency Is Assumed

[20:21] A Same-Day Language Rollout

[22:07] Locked Out of a Bank Account

[24:35] Sweden's Expense Reporting Maze

[27:59] Harmonizing Benefits Across Borders

[34:09] Running a Change Engagement Session

[42:30] Earning Trust With Senior Leadership

[44:19] Finding Risk in the Data Room

[46:36] A Pre-Close Global Checklist

[48:56] Lessons From Walking the Floor