A carve-out is a hundred moving parts and one date that has to hold.

MeridianCogent holds all of them — what transfers, what needs consent, what a TSA costs, what blocks Day 1 — and shows which commitments are still real. Built for separation offices, integration teams, corporate development, and the advisors working alongside them.

MeridianCogent is now onboarding first customers. Tell us about your program and we'll show you how it works.

What it is

A platform for running M&A separations, carve-outs and integrations. It holds the perimeter, obligations, consents, contracts, TSAs, systems, risks, costs and dates in one place, with a named human behind every number that matters.

Who it is for

Separation offices and divestiture teams, integration and PMI teams, corporate development running several deals at once, and the advisors and counsel working alongside them. Buy-side and sell-side, corporate and sponsor. Typically eight to forty people per deal team, in mid-market and enterprise transactions.

Where it is

Now onboarding first customers. Annual plans, priced by live deals, with unlimited users and guests. See pricing

The problem

The plan is not the problem. The plan not holding is the problem.

Every separation has a plan, and every plan has dates on it. What most programs cannot tell you is which of those dates are still real.

A transitional service ends when the work that replaces it finishes. That work depends on other work. Somewhere in that chain is the task that quietly determines whether September holds — and in a spreadsheet, it is indistinguishable from the forty tasks that do not matter.

By the time it is obvious, the negotiating position is gone and the extension is priced accordingly.

How it thinks

Every date is a chain, not a status.

A transitional service ends when the work behind it finishes. That work depends on other work. MeridianCogent models the chain — systems, decommissioning, TSA exit, exit risk, Day 1 — so the date that will not hold is visible months before the invoice arrives. Move one date and see what it costs the rest of the chain.

See the full model →Watch a 90-second walkthrough →

Gates

Gates that actually block

Most platforms have gates that record disapproval. The gate turns red, and the work continues anyway, because nothing in the system can stop it.

Here a gate is a real constraint on the schedule. Conditions precedent block closing rather than annotating it. The critical path reflects what is genuinely possible, not what the plan assumed in January.

Trust & record

Every number has a named human behind it

MeridianCogent does not tell you what a jurisdiction requires, does not score your risks, and does not estimate what is left to spend. Every material figure is entered by a customer or their advisor and formally adopted by a named person before it affects a plan.

Corrections supersede rather than overwrite. When something is adopted, the platform snapshots exactly what was adopted and when — so eighteen months later, the decision that was actually made, on the information actually available, is still there.

These are constraints, not gaps. They are the reason the output is defensible.

What this platform will not do

Confidentiality

Built for deals that are not public

Access is scoped to the program, not the organisation. Advisors and vendors hold time-bounded, logged access to only what they need. Programs can run under code names, exports are watermarked to whoever generated them, and unusual access patterns are surfaced rather than sitting in a log nobody reads.

Not enterprise add-ons sold separately — how the platform works by default.

Resources

From the resources

Carve-outTSA

The Separation Cost Model: What the Deal Model Usually Misses

The purchase price is negotiated once. Separation economics move every week after signing. A structure for the cost mechanisms a standard deal model doesn't capture — one-off costs, TSA exposure, standalone uplift, stranded costs, and dis-synergies.

24 October 2026 · 9 min read

Carve-outPlaybooks

The Carve-Out Day 1 Checklist: What 'Ready' Actually Covers

A practical carve-out Day 1 readiness framework across people, finance, IT, contracts, facilities and operations — and why completing a task is not the same as unblocking what depends on it.

17 October 2026 · 10 min read

PlaybooksIntegration

The First 90 Days of an M&A Separation Office: What It Should Control, Not Just Report

An M&A separation or integration office should do more than aggregate status. A practical first-90-days framework for decision rights, dependencies, readiness evidence, escalation and value capture.

10 October 2026 · 9 min read

All resources

Plans from $35,000 a year · unlimited users · security by default