M&A Integration 100-Day Plan Template (Day 1, TSA, Synergies)

M&A Integration 100-Day Plan: [Acquirer] and [Target]

A post-merger integration plan covering the period from signing to Day 100 after completion: deal thesis and synergy targets, integration approach, governance through an integration management office, the timeline, pre-completion rules, Day 1 readiness, transitional services, finance integration, people, customers, operations and IT, synergy tracking, risks, communications and the 100-day review. It follows common integration practice; merger control and acquisition accounting are referenced by law and standard name only. The worked example completes "Project Heron": Corvid Commerce Group plc (fictional) acquires Tallow Lane Logistics GmbH (fictional) from Marlow Ridge Holdings AG (fictional); every figure is invented. Replace every [bracketed] value and every row marked Example. This is a document format, not financial, investment, tax, legal or accounting advice. Obtain the standard or law for the normative text.

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Contents

1. Deal thesis, objectives and synergy targets
2. Integration approach and scope
3. Governance and the integration management office
4. Timeline
5. Rules before completion
6. Day 1 readiness
7. Transitional services
8. Finance integration
9. People and organisation
10. Customers and commercial
11. Operations and IT
12. Synergy tracking
13. Risks and dependencies
14. Communications
15. Milestones, KPIs and the 100-day review
16. Glossary and references
17. Standard and licence note

1. Deal thesis, objectives and synergy targets

Integration objectives for the first 100 days (Example):

1. Complete Day 1 with no loss of service, payments or payroll.
2. Keep every top 20 customer and every one of the 6 named key people.
3. Put Corvid's financial controls, delegation of authority and reporting calendar in place by the second month-end close.
4. Approve exit plans for every TSA service, with dates inside the TSA terms.
5. Action EUR 0.2m of run-rate cost synergies (25% of target) and launch the first cross-sell offer.

2. Integration approach and scope

The degree of integration follows the thesis. Here the value lies in the product and its customers, so the product team and customer-facing operations are preserved, while support functions that do not differentiate the business are absorbed into Corvid's. A different thesis, such as cost consolidation in a mature market, would integrate far more deeply and quickly.

3. Governance and the integration management office

Rules for the IMO:

• Each workstream has one lead from Corvid and one from Tallow Lane. Joint ownership signals respect for the acquired business and gives access to knowledge that is not written down.
• Workstreams report weekly on milestones, risks and synergy actions, using red, amber and green against dates, not against effort.
• The IMO keeps one RAID log (project/raid-log) and one decision log. Decisions made in workstream meetings that affect another workstream go to the IMO before they take effect.
• Integration costs are tracked against a separate budget so that the business-as-usual forecast of the target stays clean and the post-investment review can compare costs with the approved case.

4. Timeline

Day counts start at completion as Day 1: Day 30 is 29 days after 2027-01-04, which is 2027-02-02; Day 100 is 99 days after, which is 2027-04-13.

5. Rules before completion

Integration planning between signing and completion must respect merger control rules. Under the EU Merger Regulation (Council Regulation (EC) No 139/2004), a notifiable concentration may not be implemented before notification and clearance, and national regimes and the US Hart-Scott-Rodino Act (15 U.S.C. 18a) impose similar waiting periods. Breaching them (gun-jumping) can lead to fines. Counsel should approve the planning protocol, and the IMO should apply it.

Example: Project Heron needs no merger filing. The parties' turnover is far below the EU Merger Regulation thresholds and the German GWB section 35 thresholds (see the Due Diligence Request List (finance/due-diligence-request-list), section 11), UK merger control is voluntary and its thresholds are not met, and there is no US nexus. The rules below still apply: until completion Corvid and Tallow Lane are independent competitors for some merchants, so general competition law on information exchange and coordination continues to bind both.

Where foreign investment screening applies, for example under the UK National Security and Investment Act 2021 or national regimes in EU member states, completion must also wait for that approval. The clearance dates set Day 1; do not commit external dates, such as customer announcements, until all conditions are satisfied.

6. Day 1 readiness

How to run Day 1 readiness:

• Hold a go or no-go review with all workstream leads two business days before completion. Every item is either ready, has a workaround approved by the IMO, or blocks completion.
• Staff a Day 1 command centre with named contacts for payments, payroll, IT access and customer questions, and keep it open for at least the first two weeks. The Hypercare Plan (ops/hypercare-plan) gives a structure.
• Treat the change of bank details as a fraud risk. Criminals exploit acquisitions to send false payment instructions; tell customers how changes will be confirmed and never accept changes by email alone.

7. Transitional services

Check: 9 x 12 = 108; 6 x 8 = 48; 12 x 5 = 60; total 216.

TSA management rules:

• Each service has a description, service levels, a fee basis, a term, an extension option with notice period and price, and named contacts on both sides. Ambiguous scope is the main cause of disputes.
• Review TSA performance and exit progress at each steering committee. Start migration work in the first month; data extraction and testing usually take longer than planned.
• Agree data handling: the seller processes the target's personal and financial data under the TSA and must return or delete it at exit. Record the data processing terms with counsel.
• Track TSA fees in the integration budget, separate from synergy costs, so that extensions are visible.

8. Finance integration

Points to note:

• Acquisition accounting under IFRS 3 Business Combinations (or FASB ASC Topic 805 for US GAAP reporters) allows provisional amounts that are finalised within a measurement period of up to one year from the acquisition date. Use that period to complete the valuation of acquired intangibles; do not use it to correct errors in the opening balance sheet that could have been avoided at Day 1.
• The policy alignment items mirror the QoE adjustments QOE-ADJ-003 and QOE-ADJ-004. Applying Corvid's policies may change the target's reported results compared with the seller's figures; explain this in the first management report so readers do not mistake a policy change for underperformance.
• Use the working capital peg and net debt definitions from the SPA exactly as agreed. The QoE schedules (finance/quality-of-earnings-scope) are the starting point for the completion accounts.
• Related templates: Delegation of Authority Matrix (finance/delegation-of-authority-matrix), Treasury Policy (finance/treasury-policy), Month-End Close Checklist (finance/month-end-close-checklist), Rolling Forecast (finance/rolling-forecast), Impairment Test Memo (finance/impairment-test-memo), Transfer Pricing Local File (finance/transfer-pricing-local-file).

9. People and organisation

Retention payments are a cost of the acquisition. Under acquisition accounting, payments for future service are usually treated as post-combination expense rather than part of the price; confirm the treatment with the technical accounting lead.

Consultation duties vary by country. In Germany, the Works Constitution Act (Betriebsverfassungsgesetz) section 111 requires information and consultation with the works council on significant operational changes in undertakings with, as a rule, more than 20 employees eligible to vote. In the UK and other countries, collective consultation and information rules apply to redundancies and transfers. The UK site consolidation in SYN-001 needs a consultation plan approved by counsel before any announcement. Check local law for each change.

10. Customers and commercial

Customer messages should answer the questions customers actually ask: will my contract, contact person, price and service change, and whom do I call? Answer "no change" where that is true and give dates where it is not. The QoE revenue analysis provides the renewal dates and concentration figures that set the priority of calls.

11. Operations and IT

Use the Cutover Plan (project/cutover-plan) and the Data Migration Strategy (architecture/data-migration-strategy) for the ERP and identity moves. Plan each migration with a rehearsal and a rollback point, and schedule finance migrations away from month-end and year-end closes.

12. Synergy tracking

Stages: Identified (in the deal case), Validated (owner agrees value and plan), Actioned (decision implemented, for example a contract signed or a role removed), Realised (visible in the ledger against the baseline).

Checks: cost run-rate 225 + 150 + 175 + 165 + 85 = 800; actioned 50 + 65 + 85 = 200, which is 25% of 800; one-off costs 400 + 175 + 25 + 225 + 10 + 175 + 115 = 1,125, the integration budget in section 1. Revenue synergies: 625 + 375 = 1,000 revenue; contribution 625 x 60% + 375 x 40% = 375 + 150 = 525. SYN-004 removes the standalone roles the QoE added to adjusted EBITDA (QOE-ADJ-008), so it is a genuine synergy against the deal case rather than a reversal of a diligence finding.

Value of the synergy case, for comparison with the price premium:

where $S_t$ is the synergy benefit in year $t$, $\tau$ the tax rate, $C_t$ the one-off cost after tax in year $t$ and $r$ the discount rate used in the valuation. Use the same phasing and discount rate as the valuation report; the integration plan should not create a second, different synergy value.

Tracking rules:

• Fix the baseline before Day 1: the cost lines and volumes against which each synergy is measured. Without a baseline, every saving is arguable.
• Report run-rate actioned and in-year realised separately. A saving actioned in month 9 delivers only a quarter of its run-rate in that year.
• Finance validates realised amounts against the ledger. Workstream leads propose; finance confirms.
• Keep dis-synergies visible, such as customers lost because of the deal or higher costs in a combined contract, and net them in the report.

13. Risks and dependencies

How to keep the risk view useful:

• Review the top risks at every steering committee and change the ratings only with evidence, such as a customer renewal signed or a key engineer resigning. A risk table that never changes is not being managed.
• Link each risk to the diligence finding that raised it (for example RISK-001 to DDF-003 and RISK-002 to DDF-004), so the post-investment review can test whether diligence identified the right issues.
• Quantify impact in the units of the deal case: EBITDA, revenue at risk or one-off cost. This lets the steering committee compare mitigation spend with the value it protects.
• Escalate any dependency that slips past its date to the IMO the same week; most integration delays are dependency failures between workstreams rather than failures inside one workstream.

14. Communications

Use the Communication Plan (project/communication-plan) for the full calendar. Prepare a Q&A for managers and update it weekly with the questions employees actually ask.

15. Milestones, KPIs and the 100-day review

The 100-day review report answers:

1. Is the deal thesis still valid? What has changed since signing?
2. Which objectives in section 1 were met, and which were not and why?
3. What is the status of synergies by stage, and the forecast run-rate by year end and end of 2028?
4. Which risks have materialised, and which new ones appeared?
5. What changes to scope, organisation, budget or timeline are needed for months 4 to 12?
6. Which lessons should the acquirer's M&A playbook record?

After the review, move from the IMO cadence to monthly steering committee meetings, and plan the formal Post-Investment Review (finance/post-investment-review) at 12 to 24 months to compare outcomes with the approved investment case.

16. Glossary and references

16.1 Glossary

16.2 References

Standard and licence note

Based on public law cited by name and number (EU Merger Regulation, Hart-Scott-Rodino Act, UK National Security and Investment Act 2021, German Works Constitution Act) and on common integration practice, with IFRS 3 and FASB ASC Topic 805 cited by name and number only; no text from those standards, or from any adviser's integration methodology, is reproduced or paraphrased. IFRS is a trade mark of the IFRS Foundation. The structure, checklists, formulas and worked example are original. Corvid Commerce Group plc, Tallow Lane Logistics GmbH, Marlow Ridge Holdings AG and all figures are fictional. Check the current official texts and take advice in each jurisdiction before use. This is a document format, not financial, investment, tax, legal or accounting advice. Template licence: MIT.