WHAT DOES A CORPORATE DEVELOPMENT DIRECTOR DO?
Published: September 9, 2024 - The Corporate Development Director leads the negotiation of early-stage licensing deals and manages due diligence processes across multiple business functions, including tax, finance, and legal. Oversees complex agreement negotiations and collaborates with legal teams to create effective solutions while ensuring alignment of interests between all parties. Provides strategic guidance in financial analysis and valuation to support informed decision-making for research and clinical-stage opportunities.
A Review of Professional Skills and Functions for Corporate Development Director
1. Corporate Development Director Duties
- Business Case Development: Work with product executives to articulate acquisition rationale and develop operating and financial models to support the business case.
- Due Diligence Leadership: Lead diligence reviews of target companies and identify issues and paths to resolution.
- Negotiation Interface: Act as the primary interface for Oracle during deal negotiations.
- Value Creation Planning: Develop operating plans during due diligence to maximize value creation.
- Budget Management: Manage the development of the operating budget and model for acquisitions and review findings with Oracle management.
- Team Mentorship: Act as a trusted mentor to associates and managers on the team.
- Integration Support: Support the global head of integration with the integration of acquired businesses.
- Relationship Management: Maintain strategic and operational relationships with regional third-party Investment Banking firms, due diligence advisors, and potential targets.
- Acquisition Pipeline Management: Develop and manage a proactive acquisition pipeline, including regular governance meetings with business unit leadership and target outreach.
2. Corporate Development Director Details
- Opportunity Identification: Run the identification, analysis, and prioritization of opportunities for acquisition, investment, and strategic partnership.
- Due Diligence Oversight: Oversee deep due diligence of potential targets and new markets.
- Industry Expertise: Become an expert on the telehealth industry and surrounding digital healthcare ecosystem.
- Relationship Building: Cultivate a strong network of relationships with relevant company executives, venture and PE investors, investment bankers, and industry experts to source new deals.
- Business Case Development: Develop business cases for internally built opportunities.
- Cross-functional Collaboration: Communicate and collaborate with Teladoc Health leaders in all functional areas.
- Strategic Roadmap: Partner with Corporate Strategy to develop and refine the overall roadmap.
- Executive Communication: Prepare and present materials for senior management and the Board of Directors.
- Value Creation Planning: Develop value creation plans for new sites.
- Financial Forecasting: Forecast and evaluate financial performance for the Home and Auto portfolio of business.
- Market Analysis: Constantly analyze the market for new investment opportunities.
3. Corporate Development Director Responsibilities
- M&A Playbook Development: Lead the development of the company M&A Playbook, including investment criteria, target identification, evaluation, deal execution, and post-close implementation processes in alignment with the company’s strategic goals.
- M&A Focus: Collaborate with the executive team to identify and prioritize areas of M&A focus.
- Financial Modeling: Partner with the FP&A team to model opportunities and create pro-forma views of acquisition opportunities.
- Cross-Functional Management: Work cross-functionally (Finance, Corp Dev, HR, Operations) to manage the diligence process.
- Deal Execution: Drive execution in all phases of deal processes (pre-deal analyses and go-to-market strategy, high-quality due diligence coordination and execution, integration planning, and post-close integration/separation).
- Post-Acquisition Integration: Manage post-acquisition integration and onboarding, ensuring that business case synergies are achieved and that integration risks are minimized.
- Divestiture Management: Manage divestiture carve-out and subsequent internal restructuring, ensuring that business case goals are achieved and that separation risks are minimized.
- Program Management: Lead program management of internal development of public company processes and functions.
- Investor Relations Support: Support Investor Relations communications.
4. Corporate Development Director Job Summary
- Business Analysis: Conduct analyses to inform business decisions.
- Research: Direct and perform independent and primary research, as needed, to obtain information required for business analysis.
- Growth Strategy: Work across the organization to identify growth opportunities and develop strategies to realize these opportunities.
- Commercial Planning: Contribute to the development of commercial and go-to-market plans.
- Business Development: Assist with business development opportunities, including the creation of high-impact material, financial analyses, and due diligence support.
- Strategic Visioning: Identify and present opportunities to leverage the company’s IP and radiotherapy technologies to advance the company’s strategic vision.
- Cost Efficiency: Research and propose opportunities for the company to generate cost savings and operating leverage.
- Industry Representation: Represent the company at industry conferences to identify and cultivate relationships with the goal of advancing the company’s strategic vision.
- Financial Analysis: Conduct analyses to inform business decisions, including financial modeling and forecasting, scenario analysis, NPV calculations, and other ad hoc analyses as required.
- Information Gathering: Direct and/or perform research as needed to obtain information required for business analyses.
- Technology Leveraging: Identify and present opportunities to leverage the company’s technologies to advance their strategic vision.
5. Corporate Development Director Accountabilities
- Acquisition Targeting: Exploring potential acquisition targets, screening inbounds, identifying investment thesis and synergies, leading due diligence activities, and coordinating with cross-functional teams on post-merger integration.
- Strategic Alignment: Identifying and prioritizing acquisition targets in alignment with the company’s strategic plan.
- Market Assessment: Conducting organizational assessments through market landscape, assessing ecosystems and competition to identify strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities relative to market dynamics.
- Due Diligence Leadership: Leading cross-functional due diligence efforts across operations, finance, accounting, legal, HR, IT, tax, and/or third-party advisors.
- Financial Analysis: Supporting Finance Team’s development of detailed financial analysis, including discounted cash flow models, comprehensive pro-forma merger models, accretion/(dilution) analysis, and analysis at various prices.
- Transaction Proposal: Formulating and presenting transaction proposals to leadership teams that include a thorough evaluation of the strategic rationale, risks, valuation, and financial return metrics.
- PMI Management: Managing the PMI process, including creation of the integration plan (value creation goals, targets, and timelines), organizing activities, and project managing each business function plan.
- Negotiation: Negotiating letters of intent and transaction purchase agreements.
- Post-Close Integration: Leading post-close integration efforts alongside PMO to identify, capture, and realize deal synergies.
- PMI Standardization: Developing standard PMI playbook with repeatable processes.
- PMI Approach: Establishing PMI approach for both small tuck-in acquisitions and larger, more complex transactions.
6. Corporate Development Director Functions
- Valuation: Produce valuations using various valuation techniques, assumptions, and sensitivities.
- Transaction Management: Lead in the management, negotiation, and execution of corporate acquisitions, disposals, and joint ventures from origination/inception to completion.
- Negotiation: Negotiate price and structure to optimize the financial aspects of transactions and provide insight into the negotiation of legal documentation in conjunction with in-house and third-party legal advisers.
- Transaction Monitoring: Monitor procedures and controls for transactions.
- Strategic Review: Assist in the preparation of strategic reviews, including participating actively in making recommendations to divest, hold, or acquire businesses.
- Governance: Maintain the highest standards of governance and risk standards, including compliance with Group and Strategy governance policies and standards.
- Policy Development: Assist in developing, maintaining, and ensuring consistent implementation of Strategy policies.
- Relationship Management: Develop and maintain close links with the Group businesses and with external advisors.
- Opportunity Sourcing: Develop knowledge base and specialization to seek out origination opportunities to support the team’s coverage of Barclays’ key business units.
- Stakeholder Management: Ensure effective coordination with all external parties to support the disposal process (including external counsel, brokers, and borrowers).
- Team Coordination: Ensure effective coordination and timely delivery from junior colleagues.
7. Corporate Development Director Job Description
- Deal Sourcing: Manage all aspects of deal sourcing, including building target lists, outreaching to potential leads, and establishing a pipeline of potential acquisition opportunities.
- Market Research: Perform and compile research to identify growth opportunities, including sizing up the market, stack ranking companies in that market, and making recommendations accordingly within core markets and for expansion into new markets and services.
- Financial Modeling: Build financial models and conduct valuation analysis for potential transactions.
- LOI Development: Develop and assist in the negotiation of Letters of Intent (LOIs).
- Due Diligence: Provide pre-deal due diligence for all identified opportunities, including synergies, examining risks, and strategic alignment, while leading other cross-functional work streams.
- M&A Best Practices: Contribute to and implement M&A best practices.
- Stakeholder Communication: Support communications and presentations with key external stakeholders (e.g., board members, investors).
- Integration Planning: Collaborate with functional workstream leads to create and maintain integration checklists and activities across all deals.
- KPI Tracking: Develop, track, and report on post-acquisition KPIs and metrics while reporting on progress, milestones, and risks associated with integration.
- Lesson Integration: Integrate lessons learned and adapt into future M&A activity.
- Integration Communication: Act as the central point of contact and source of truth for internal and acquired company stakeholders related to integration communications and questions.
8. Corporate Development & Partnerships Director Tasks
- Strategic Planning: Play a lead role in InVision's strategic planning process.
- Strategy Execution: Establish the company's strategic priorities, filtering corporate-level strategy down to relevant activities and investments for each department, and carrying forward those efforts that fall in the Corporate Development/Partnerships domain.
- Product Knowledge: Build a thorough understanding of InVision products and how we add value to customers.
- Market Intelligence: Gather intelligence and insights about the broader market, ecosystem, and key players within it.
- Competitive Positioning: Synthesize this knowledge into a point of view on how we can drive sustained competitive advantage, and specifically how collaborating with other players in the ecosystem may help establish, reinforce, or enhance this strategic positioning.
- Partnership Development: Drive InVision's partnership strategy development and identification, prospecting, and negotiation with partners.
- M&A Leadership: Identify and drive M&A activity, including deal screening, due diligence, investment case development, transaction structuring, managing third-party intermediaries, financial analysis, and post-merger integration.
- Special Projects: Participate in or lead ad hoc special internal consulting projects at the request of the CEO, CSO, or other executives.
- Market Opportunity Analysis: Co-own (with Strategy & Business Operations leadership colleagues) InVision's addressable market definition and opportunity sizing by industry vertical, sub-segment, and geography.
9. Corporate Development Director Roles
- Deal Negotiation: Negotiate research/early clinical-stage licensing deals.
- Due Diligence Management: Manage business due diligence processes by working closely with team members from tax, finance, legal, and other areas within the company.
- Issue Resolution: Manage complex issues during agreement negotiations and partner with legal to construct solutions.
- Decision Framing: Frame issues and options clearly to enable SeaGen management team to make informed decisions.
- Financial Analysis Support: Provide guidance to the development of analytical models and partner with finance to perform financial analyses to comprehensively value opportunities.
- Transaction Structuring: Understand the potential partner’s interests to help ensure transactions are structured so that the parties’ interests are aligned
- Opportunity Evaluation: Evaluate research and early clinical-stage opportunities together with respective functional area colleagues.
- Relationship Building: Establish collaborative, effective, and trusting relationships with key internal functions, including commercial, clinical, R&D, legal, manufacturing, and finance to ensure the free flow of information and ideas.
- Conference Participation: Attend several major business and medical conferences each year to help prospect new opportunities, build relationships with potential partners, and negotiate active deals.
- Project Support: Provide project support to other BD team members.
10. Corporate Development Director Additional Details
- Financial Modeling: Own the financial model, including valuation analysis, scenario modeling, acquisition modeling, long-range planning.
- Collaboration: Work directly with FP&A to keep operating models updated.
- Opportunity Evaluation: Lead the evaluation of new acquisition, partnership, and investment opportunities, providing summary analysis and reporting to the Chief Strategy Officer, executive leadership team, and Board of Directors.
- Transaction Management: Manage all aspects of the transaction process, including due diligence, financial modeling, valuation analysis, business case creation, integration planning, negotiation, and integration execution.
- Stakeholder Coordination: Lead the transaction execution process from LOI to transaction close by working directly with internal and external stakeholders.
- Project Management: Utilize project management tools to keep detailed alignment of all stakeholders throughout the process.
- Industry Knowledge: Develop and maintain a detailed understanding of Velocity Global’s industry and operations to leverage in research and analysis of growth opportunities, competitors, and acquisition prospects.
- Relationship Management: Develop and maintain relationships with deal resources to identify acquisition, partnership, and investment opportunities.
- Initiative Planning: Develop and execute project plans for new initiatives, coordinate with internal stakeholders, conduct research and analysis, and manage cross-functional project execution.
- Trend Analysis: Actively monitor, forecast, and perform in-depth research and analysis of global industry and client trends, including macro-economic indicators correlating to the company’s performance.
- Competitive Intelligence: Build and manage competitive intelligence around key industry players and new market entrants.
- Cross-functional Leadership: Build consensus among cross-functional teams and influence decision-making within senior-level audiences.
- Valuation Maintenance: Maintain valuation metrics for the industry (e.g. comparable companies, transaction comparables, capital raise activities).