Working guides and practitioner-level writing on TSAs, carve-out separation, integration and Day 1 readiness — from the MeridianCogent team.
Working documents drawn from the articles below — built to be useful with a spreadsheet and a named owner, not a platform.
A working checklist across HR, IT, Finance, Legal, Procurement, Facilities and TSA — with the readiness test that separates a completed task from an actually unblocked one.
PDF · 6 pages · free
A month-by-month operating structure, a service-by-service exit acceptance matrix, and the failure patterns that account for most TSA exits that run long.
PDF · 6 pages · free
Six cost mechanisms most deal models miss, a buyer/seller exposure map, and a worksheet to size your own transaction against real benchmarks.
PDF · 6 pages · free
13 articles
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
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
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
A green M&A status report is not the same as execution readiness. Cross-functional dependencies often become visible only at the handoff between workstreams — precisely where traditional status reporting is weakest.
23 September 2026 · 8 min read
Every published figure we could find on TSA duration by workstream, extension pricing, and stranded cost ranges, in one table, with the source for each. Updated as better data appears.
17 September 2026 · 10 min read
Half of companies that divest see profitability fall in the year after. The overhead that does not leave with the business is a large part of why — and it is knowable before signing.
14 September 2026 · 9 min read
Services and systems discovered after close. Here's exactly where a $5M scope creep bill comes from, broken down line by line, and the defense that actually works.
10 September 2026 · 11 min read
A clear, practitioner-level explanation of TSAs — what they cover, how long they run, real cost data, and why they're one of the most consequential documents in any carve-out.
4 September 2026 · 10 min read
Start separation planning too soon and you're building for a deal that changes. Wait too long and you'll discover entanglements post-close that cost millions. Here's the deal timeline that resolves the paradox.
2 September 2026 · 10 min read
TSA extensions rarely look expensive in the moment. Here's the exact escalation math behind why they quietly erode deal value more than almost any other post-close risk.
26 August 2026 · 9 min read
Third-party consents are a critical-path item in most carve-outs and an afterthought in most deal plans. Why the volume is always higher than expected, and why asking early costs you leverage.
14 August 2026 · 9 min read
Day 1 readiness is one of the most frequently claimed and least rigorously tested milestones in a carve-out. Here's a stricter definition, a minimum-viable-readiness framework, and the cost of getting it wrong.
14 August 2026 · 11 min read
Regulator-mandated divestitures underperform, and the reasons are almost entirely operational. Academic research on antitrust remedies turns out to describe every compressed carve-out.
31 July 2026 · 9 min read