Mind The Gap

5How to Get the Deal Done: Different Systems, Different Finish Lines

Emerging markets can be excellent places to grow a business, but many businesspeople tend to overlook a challenge they present. Very often it’s not just the market that is “emerging.” The country’s legal and regulatory systems, as well as the business practices that are common there, may be in an emergent state as well. This can make them unfamiliar—and potentially treacherous—to newcomers who enter the market expecting these things to work pretty much as they do in more fully developed environments.

An emergent and uncertain business context doesn’t mean you cannot scale there. It does mean you need to be mindful of the risks and how to tackle them. So we’ll now lay out a mental map that can serve as a helpful guide.

What Exactly Does It Mean to Close a Deal?

The meaning can vary from one culture to another. In the United States and Europe, it normally means to find commercial alignment with another party and then crystallize it into one or more contracts to make it binding and enforceable. Contract signed = deal done. Stefano remembers clearly his first M&A deal as an attorney in Europe. Months of due-diligence work, commercial negotiations, and drafting of terms all culminated in the signing and closing of the transaction. In a room crowded with lawyers and representatives of the two parties—two large European funds, which were respectively buying and selling a portfolio of a dozen commercial malls and ...