Explorative research into the significance of activities of the corporate real estate management organisation in different phases of the merger and acquisition process

The purpose of this paper is to identify which activities of the corporate real estate management (CREM) organisation need to be performed during the different phases of a merger and acquisition (M&A) process. These activities show the possible role for CREM during this process in order to offer better support and possibly add more value to the organisation. First, a review of CREM literature provided a list of CREM activities. General literature on M&A processes helped to identify the different phases of M&As. Then, case studies of three multinational companies that recently had gone through an M&A process were performed. In order to confirm the findings on activities for each phase, three real estate advisors were also interviewed to further explore the role of CREM during the M&A process. In total, 33 CREM activities were found in the literature that were relevant for the CREM organisation, coupled with two more activities mentioned by the interviewees. The interviews showed that all the CREM activities are important during at least one of the phases of the M&A process. A framework has been developed with the activities that were mentioned most for each of the phases to increase usability of the research in practice. The importance of the activities of the CREM organisation during the M&A process has hardly been studied. This study attempts to provide more insight into this topic, with the aim to make CRE managers aware of the role they could play within an M&A to increase alignment with corporate decision making.