The deal workspace
Most M&A tooling stops at discovery. ACQI gives the deal team a single workspace where discovery, planning, and governance live together — so the same people who scan the target's estate on Monday are reporting wave completion to the steering committee on Friday.
No stitched-together point tools. No re-keying spreadsheets between diligence and integration. No gap between what the board sees and what the server room is doing. Where a flip is necessary, we say so. Where a number is an estimate, it's labelled as one. The deal team can trust the workspace because the workspace is honest about what it doesn't know.
M&A lifecycle, not just app tabs
ACQI's workspace is grouped around the canonical 9-phase M&A lifecycle — from initial target screening through post-close hypercare. Each stage in the workspace corresponds to one or more of those phases, with the people, outputs, and decision gates that the phase actually requires.
Why we want this deal. Before any target is named.
Establish WHY the deal is being considered before WHAT to acquire. Investment theses, guiding coalition, strategic vision. Working thesis first, thesis revisit second; the #1 integration failure is doing the deal for strategic reasons but managing it as a financial transaction.
Universe → shortlist → signed letter of intent.
Filter 100 candidates to 5-10 against screening criteria. The LOI captures exclusivity window, MAC clause, and price range before either side commits DD capital. Most pricing fights actually start at LOI mechanics, not at the SPA.
9-track workplan. EBITDA normalized across all four valuation methods.
The 9-track diligence workplan (Financial / People / Tax / Legal / Operations / IT / Compliance / Commercial / Environmental). IT track is seeded live from the 240 discovery modules. EBITDA normalization (QoE) comes BEFORE valuation. Four valuation methods (DCF, Trading Comps, Precedent Comps, LBO) run side-by-side; recovery ratio tells whether the deal actually creates value.
Structure, regulatory, sign-offs, 10-task closing checklist.
Structuring (asset vs stock vs merger), consideration mix (cash vs stock vs rollover), working-capital peg with true-up at close. Regulatory filings across jurisdictions (HSR, EU Merger Reg, CFIUS, UK CMA, China SAMR, etc.). Gates sign off per stage. The 10-task closing checklist is the difference between close-on-time and a blown signing window.
Day-1 → D+365. Comms cadence, synergy tracking, RACI.
Day-1 readiness → 100-day workplan → 365-day Gantt. People change is tracked through the 8-step and 3-phase transition model. Comms cadence runs D-1, D+1, D+7, D+30, D+90. Cost track moves identified → committed → realized. Synergy tracked in three streams (Cost, Revenue, Operational).
Divestiture TSAs, recovery plans, audit trail.
Either the deal converts to steady-state operations, or carve-out TSAs need separation tracking, or synergies miss at D+180 and a 100-day turnaround kicks (8-dimension diagnostic). The Evidence tab is always there — every claim on every other tab resolves back to a row in the data room.
How we score a deal
Seven dimensions, weighted per deal, computed deterministically from cross-store signals. The score on the Overview tab is the visible output; the math lives in `dealHealthEngine.ts` and is rebuilt every time any signal changes (per SPEC-D-01). No fabrication — every dimension reads from real data.
Synergy capture rate vs target. Cost savings identified vs committed vs realized. Working-capital variance.
Discovery-data signals: orphan resources, security posture gaps, EOL inventory, integration-readiness score from 240 discovery modules.
Day-1 readiness, TSA coverage, integration workstream status, RACI completeness.
Sentiment trend, transition-phase mapping (Ending → Neutral → New Beginning), at-risk escalation count.
Per-deal attestation grid, regulatory filing status, GDPR/HIPAA/SOX/PCI-DSS requirement closure.
Risk register severity distribution, mitigation coverage, evidence citation rate. Hard-cite enforced for WARD/AUDT authors.
Stakeholder coverage, RACI completeness, comms cadence adherence, OCM milestone status.
Audit-trail integrity: every claim on every tab resolves to a row in Evidence. "Cite or it didn't happen."
All 30 tabs
Each card shows what the tab does, the source (SPEC or canonical M&A text), the data signals it reads, the default owner, whether it gates a sign-off, and how live it is today.
SPEC-D-03 / SPEC-26 Live Pre-deal Where every deal starts.
Deal workspace hero — stage timeline, KPI tiles, recent-activity feed. Read-only.
any
SPEC-D-01 / SPEC-87 In progress All phases Charts the deal, not the discovery.
Per-deal workstream rollup — KPI aggregation from App / Infra / Data / Security / Org swim-lanes. Charts the deal, not the discovery.
imo
Charts real, drill-downs limited
SPEC-D-03 In progress Phase 0 — Strategy Why we want this deal.
Phase 0 — Strategic rationale (4 quadrants: market-access, product, cost, talent), target-screening weighted checklist, investment hypotheses tracker. The why before the LOI.
ic + imo
Form wired, write-back thin
SPEC-196 Stub Phase 2 — LOI Letter of Intent terms.
Phase 2 — Letter of Intent. Term fields, MAC clause, exclusivity countdown, exclusivity-management checklist. Persists to deal-scoped file store.
lead negotiator
Stub data, real UI
SPEC-D-02 / DD Live Phase 3 — Due Diligence The 9-track diligence checklist.
Phase 3 — Due-Diligence Tracker. Nine tracks: Financial, People, Tax, Legal, Operations, IT, Compliance, Commercial, Environmental. Items seeded from discovery data on the IT track.
dd workstream leads
SPEC-147 In progress Phase 4 — Valuation Clean the numbers before they hit the model.
EBITDA Normalization / Quality of Earnings worksheet. Income Statement, Normalization Adjustments with rationale, summary bar (Reported → Adjusted → Normalized EBITDA). Manual entry only.
cfo + advisors
Form + grid real, mixed data sources
deal-valuation Live Phase 4 — Valuation Four methods. One number with confidence.
Four valuation methodologies in a 2×2 grid — DCF (WACC × growth sensitivity), Trading Comps (EV/Rev, EV/EBITDA, P/E), Precedent Comps (premium analysis), LBO (capital structure, returns waterfall, exit-multiple sensitivity).
cfo
SPEC-FUNC-15 Live
gates sign-off
Phase 4 — Valuation Is the deal actually worth it.
Premium recovery, synergy NPV, recovery ratio — surfaced directly in the workspace so deal leads don't navigate to /financial/deal-economics.
cfo
deal-lifecycle §5 In progress Phase 5 — Structuring How the deal is shaped on paper.
Phase 5 — Deal Structuring & Negotiation: transaction mechanism (asset/stock/merger/reverse/LBO), consideration mix (cash/stock/rollover), working-capital peg with true-up at close.
lead negotiator + legal
Inline editing visible, handler status pending
SPEC-148 In progress
gates sign-off
Phase 5 — Structuring Working capital peg and variance.
Working Capital peg analysis tool — true-up at close, peg negotiations, WC adjustments. The dollar gap surfaced on the closing balance sheet.
cfo
Form + variance real, save status pending
Stakeholders Live All phases Everyone on the deal and what they touch.
Roster of executive sponsors, IMO, workstream leads, external advisors. Cadence column drives the comms schedule.
imo
Risks Live All phases Deal risk register with severity, owner, citation.
Deal-level Risk Register. Hard-cite enforced for WARD/AUDT authors. Shows severity, status, mitigation, evidence chip. Combines hard risks (security gaps, priv-accounts, dormant users) and soft risks (sentiment trends).
ward (cited only)
SPEC-D-02 / Synergy Live Phase 5 — Structuring Cost down, Revenue up. Locked then Realized.
Cost / Revenue / Leakage capture with targeted → locked → realized progression. The EVA Cascade panel at top shows the math live. AI proposals for bulk-accept.
synergy owner (per stream)
SPEC-D-04 / SPEC-357 In progress Phase 8 — Day 1 / 9 — Integration The 100-day workplan.
Day-1 → D+365 playbook tracker — Board view (five milestone columns, workstream/owner/status/wave), Timeline view (read-only horizontal Gantt).
imo
Grid + add modal real, handler status pending
SPEC-37 In progress All phases Who owns what, per workstream.
Deal-scoped RACI matrix — who is Responsible/Accountable/Consulted/Informed for each integration workstream activity. Separate from governance-decision RACI.
imo
Grid populates from store, save UX pending
deal-change-management Stub Phase 9 — Integration Change management. 8-step rollout, 3-phase transition, milestones.
Organizational Change Management — 8-step rollout tracker, 3-phase transition model (Ending → Neutral → New Beginning), Day 1 / D7 / D30 / D90 / D180 checklists.
ocm lead
UI present, edit handlers not wired
SPEC-05 In progress Phase 9 — Integration What people on the ground are saying.
Employee Sentiment engine — Survey Builder + Trending (rollup, heatmap, transition zone, at-risk escalation). Backed by real sentiment:* handlers.
ocm lead
Trend chart real, data sources mixed
SPEC-D-01 / Gates Live All phases Go / No-Go at every stage.
Stage-gate signoff log — gates grouped by stage, each card shows decision, signatories, blocking items, evidence cites.
ic + audt (verification)
acq-8-close Live Phase 7 — Closing The closing-day checklist.
Deal close cockpit — aggregates Gates signoff into a close-readiness view, tracks close timeline, advances deal stage when gates clear, links to execution dashboard.
lead negotiator
SPEC-212 In progress All phases What if we paid 10% less.
Deal Scenario Modeling Engine — List → Detail → Comparison flows. Compute scenario impact with baseline / parameters / computed impact, JSONL-persisted by dealId.
cfo + strategy
Save/delete UI present, handler confirm pending
SPEC-43 Live Phase 9 — Integration What if the cutover goes sideways.
Cutover contingency planning — Scenario List (probability/impact/owner), Decision Tree (go/no-go nodes), Comms log for contingency stakeholders.
imo + cutover lead
deal-regulatory In progress Phase 6 — Regulatory Filings, approvals, conditions.
Anti-trust & regulatory filings tracker — HSR (30-day, second-request), EU Merger Reg (Phase I 25d → Phase II 90d), CFIUS (45+45), UK CMA, China SAMR, Australia ACCC, Canada CB, Germany BKartA.
legal + external counsel
Timeline real, form wired
SPEC-40 In progress All phases Deal-level sign-off and attestation.
Per-deal compliance roadmap — regulation cards (GDPR / HIPAA / SOX / PCI-DSS + custom) with per-regulation requirements grid.
compliance lead + legal
Grid + form real, handler depth pending
Comms Live Phase 9 — Integration Campaigns and comms templates.
Comms timeline — announcements, regulatory filings, town halls. Chronological with status badges, audience colour code. Inline edit with Escape-to-cancel.
comms lead
SPEC-D-02 / Costs In progress Phase 9 — Integration Where the integration money actually goes.
Cost takeout tracker — run-rate cost reductions (savings) + one-time costs (transition). Each row tracks identified → committed → realized. Fed by discovery (orphan resources, oversized VMs, duplicate licences).
cfo + imo
Form + breakdown real, handler verify pending
SPEC-259 / SPEC-542 Live Phase 4 — Valuation What it will cost to integrate.
Forward cost projections for the deal — integration spend runway, run-rate trajectory, sensitivity bands. Day-1, Day-100, Year-1, Year-2 cost bands.
cfo
deal-turnaround Stub Phase 10b — Recovery 100-day diagnostic and recovery.
Phase 10b (recovery) — auto-triggered when realized synergy < 50% of targeted at D+180 (or manually). 8-dimension diagnostic with severity, root-cause hypotheses, action plan.
intervention lead
Stub data, handlers not wired
Master Runbook Divestiture Branch Live Phase 10 — Separation TSA tracker and perimeter mapping for carve-outs.
TSA tracker + perimeter mapping. Tab is conditionally visible — only when the deal is flagged isDivestiture OR has any linked companies (carve-out indicator).
separation lead
Evidence In progress All phases The audit trail.
Data-room evidence / cites for the deal — the audit trail that backs every claim made on the other tabs.
audt (verification)
Gallery + grid real, backend verify pending
SPEC-296 Live All phases ARIA's read on this deal.
Historical pattern mining, analogues, risk correlations, synergy benchmarks, prescriptive recommendations, timeline predictions — all from real stored closed-deal outcomes.
aria (persona-aware)
What's actually shipped
Functional completeness of the Deal system (the math behind the workspace) comes
from seven SPEC-D-* specs in wiki/mna/specs/.
The aggregate is ~76% complete
across the seven specs. The remaining gaps are listed honestly below — no marketing
rounding.
SPEC-D-01 7-dimension health aggregate from real cross-store signals. Weight editor, signal drill-down, threshold config, historical trend.
SPEC-D-02 Real-deal roll-up wired (dealStore.ts:219-235 → useDealHealthLogic.ts:44-45 → dealHealthEngine.ts:115). Demo-seed branch at dealHandlers.ts:2222 is missing counts.synergyLocked/synergyTarget — known 6-consecutive-audit open gap.
SPEC-D-03 DealRegistryView, DealWorkspaceView, NewDealWizard, ActivityFeedView all wired at routes.tsx:634-658. SPEC-540 batch added 5 orphan tabs to DealWorkspaceView.
SPEC-D-04 WorkstreamCoordinationView (642L, +14 with SPEC-516 DensityToggle), WorkstreamHealthPulseView (364L), useWorkstreamHealthLogic hook invoked at L264.
SPEC-D-05 PortfolioHealthDashboardView 544L but no filter bar. SearchBar + FilterChips exist as design tokens (commit 1329a506ed batch-51) but not integrated.
SPEC-D-06 Design batches B28 (motion), B36 (lucide floor), B42 (status-error), B49/50/55/57/70 (skin-aware neutrals across 425 files), B97 (honest-data marks). Aria shell migration complete.
SPEC-D-07 Frontmatter + structure in place; ACQI Implementation sections in 4 playbooks (deal-runbook, deal-synergies, deal-integration, deal-lifecycle) not yet populated. Natural for Scribe to own.
Two SEAL-BLOCKER gaps have remained open across the last six consecutive deal-system
audits (verifiable in wiki/audits/2026-07-22-deal-mvp-watch.md):
dealHandlers.ts:2222 only
counts.synergies is set; the
synergyLocked /
synergyTarget fields needed for the
Financial dimension to read on demo deals are missing. Real deals work. ~20 minutes
to fix plus a regression test.
PortfolioHealthDashboardView.tsx
has the data, has the design tokens (SearchBar,
FilterChips in commit
1329a506ed batch-51), but the integration
is a separate step. 3-5 hours plus a UI test.
These aren't marketing-worthy. They're visible to anyone reading the audit log. We'll fix them.
Discovery → Deal
The 240 discovery modules don't decorate this page — they populate specific deal-workspace inputs. Concrete examples, named end-to-end:
Discovery surfaces privileged-group membership, stale accounts, password-policy health, Kerberoastable SPNs, AS-REP-roastable accounts. Each finding becomes a DD work-item with owner + status, and feeds the Risk register (security posture gaps, privilege-escalation paths, dormant accounts).
wp wiki mna deal-due-diligence §"ACQI Discovery Modules for Tech DD"
Orphaned disks, public IPs, NICs, and empty resource groups become run-rate cost reductions. Each row in Costs has identified → committed → realized, and discovery data populates the "identified" column with dollar estimates.
wp wiki mna deal-synergies §"Cost synergy capture mechanics"
The integration Gantt is organized by application-dependency graph. Migration waves are sequenced so applications move with their upstream/downstream dependencies, not independently. Readiness scores from the discovery batch gate each milestone.
wp wiki mna deal-integration §"Wave sequencing by dependency"
The blood-hound-style attack graph becomes hard risks. "Concrete attack path length 3 from compromised service account to Domain Admin via 2 application admins with no MFA." Quantifies the breach radius for cyber-insurance underwriting, which feeds the deal insurance estimate.
wp wiki mna deal-due-diligence §"AttackPathAnalysisDiscovery"
Sentiment survey responses merge with hard IT risks in the same register. "Soft" risks (sentiment trend, transition-phase deterioration) and "hard" risks (security gaps, priv-accounts) feed one view — Ward persona enforces citation on both halves.
wp wiki mna deal-lifecycle §Phase 9 Integration
The 1-3% of deal value that integration typically costs gets modeled at D-1, D+100, Y1, Y2 bands. Inputs: orphan-resource cleanup cost, EOL remediation, identity-merge complexity (AD forests, Entra tenants), shadow SaaS rationalization, license consolidation.
SPEC-259 / SPEC-542
Reading list
Plain-English definitions for the M&A vocabulary used across the workspace tabs. Anyone who's been through a deal will recognize them; anyone who hasn't is now on solid footing.
Every concern of an M&A lifecycle, in one place, wired to live data — not a marketing-segmented suite.