Building M&A Research from Ambiguous Briefs

Sarthi structures research and analysis when the brief is vague, the market is poorly mapped, or the criteria have not been defined. He starts with what the client actually needs to decide, then builds the framework around that. This pattern showed up clearly in the European MedTech mandate, where he received no screening criteria and reverse-engineered the acquirer's priorities from prior deal history. It also shaped how he approached the Novartis deal materials, where he had to build the value case for a premium transaction from first principles. His process runs from stakeholder intent to research structure to evidence, rather than from data to output. He pulls from company filings, management commentary, broker consensus, and third-party research, then synthesizes into a grounded view. The result is research that holds up when a banker asks where a number came from.