Case study – M&A advisory
Most of the CIM was written before the team touched it.
A New York M&A advisory firm had a sell-side CIM due on a committed date. A drafting agent built the 48-slide deck from the client's intake pack, 31 of its 40 content slides arriving written. The team edited rather than built, and the process reached buyers on time.
Results
One CIM, counted slide by slide from the delivered deck.
- 48
- slides delivered
- 40 content pages behind eight structural
- 31 of 40
- content slides arrived written
- ready to edit, not to build
- 91%
- of narrative slides written
- with the hand-built financial section set aside
- On time
- in front of buyers
- against a committed mid-February date
The challenge
A CIM on a fixed date, against several live processes.
The firm is the exclusive sell-side advisor on an education services mandate, and was already running agents Analyst3 built for deal sourcing and origination. Several mandates moved into execution at the same time, and CIM production became the constraint on the one with a date attached.
- Several live processes competing for the same senior attention
- The story for the deck sat across an outline, call notes and the client's intake pack rather than in one place
- A committed deadline to have materials in front of buyers by mid-February
What went live
A drafting agent that writes in the register bankers read.
Structure before prose
A high-level outline becomes a slide-level plan across the six sections the deck is built on, specifying what belongs on each page before anything is written.
Written from the intake pack
Working from interview notes, financials and existing client materials, the agent writes slide by slide in investment banking register, including the strap-line takeaway at the foot of each page, and positions the business for the buyers it is going to.
Gaps marked, not invented
Slides that turn on data held only inside the business come back tagged for the client, and figures still moving are bracketed. The team sees what to fill rather than hunting for what was invented.
A source behind every line
Each written item carries a reference back to the file it came from, so review is a spot check against the source. Where the intake pack was thin, the slide is completed from market research and cited the same way.
What arrived
Where the writing landed, and where it did not.
The financial section was built by hand, with no agent involvement. Six of the nine slides needing client input sit there.
| Section | Content slides | Written | Needs client input |
|---|---|---|---|
| Executive Summary | 7 | 6 | 1 |
| Industry Overview | 5 | 5 | 0 |
| Company Overview | 11 | 10 | 1 |
| Customers | 5 | 5 | 0 |
| Growth Vectors | 6 | 5 | 1 |
| Financial Overview, built by hand | 6 | 0 | 6 |
| Total | 40 | 31 | 9 |
Counted slide by slide from the delivered 48-slide deck. Eight structural pages, the cover, the contents and six section dividers, sit behind the 40 content slides.
Method
How a slide was counted as written.
- A content slide needs client input if it carries a bracketed instruction asking for data, commentary or a decision, or if it runs under 25 words with no chart, table or exhibit. Every other content slide is counted as written
- Unfinished footnote sources and bracketed figures are not counted as gaps. The delivery email flagged brackets as numbers that might still move, so they sit on finished slides
- Two slides sit close to the line. Counting them the other way would put the figure at 80 per cent rather than 78, and the stricter reading is the one used
The outcome
A draft the team finished rather than started.
- Draft delivered ahead of the client's mid-February commitment to buyers
- On review the client found the quality of the work good, with nothing materially wrong
- The team edited and finished the deck rather than building it, and the process launched on the original timeline
Why it matters
What the firm is left holding.
Partners stay on the deals
Senior time went to the other live mandates instead of writing slides.
Judgment stays with the advisor
The drafting is automated and the advisory team keeps the judgment, which is what makes the output safe to put in front of buyers.
The firm came back for a second
A second agent-drafted CIM followed for the same firm.
Curious what your next CIM looks like when most of it is already written?
We start with the process you are about to launch and show you what comes back drafted, cited and ready to edit.