Professor Sirower is the world’s premier expert on M&A strategy and post-merger integration. He was a professor at Columbia University. He has taught Mergers and Acquisitions at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and is currently a visiting professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business, teaching M&A to executives.

Professor Sirower is the author of The Synergy Trap: How Companies Lose the Acquisition Game, now in its tenth printing and in six languages. The Synergy Trap provides the first formal and functional definition for synergy in a successful M&A deal: the specific increases in performance beyond those already expected for companies to achieve independently. The ideas and tools in The Synergy Trap represent a meaningful and detailed standard for what constitutes best M&A practices that has been endorsed by many high-profile executives, academics, corporations and professional associations. His research and articles on best practice in acquisition performance have been featured in major business journals and mainstream periodicals.

Professor Sirower advises companies on how to identify strategic needs that M&A could serve, how to evaluate and approach M&A prospects, how to handle investor relations and communications, and how to realise the deal’s intended value through effective integration or through remedial integration when a deal fails to deliver as promised. He focuses on transforming clients from merely reacting to growth opportunities to proactively finding the best opportunities and growing shareholder value. He emphasises strategic integrity in his approach to mergers and acquisitions, helping companies exercise their duty of care to shareholders. He has been most active in helping industrial goods and pharmaceutical companies rethink and grow their businesses profitably through M&A. He held positions with KPMG Peat Marwick, Burroughs Corporation, The Boston Consulting Group, and PriceWaterhouseCoopers. Before that, he was president of a private asset-management firm specialising in quantitative management techniques.