Nexi

Super charging strategic thinking and decision making in M&A ops

The greatest M&A
Italy has ever seen.

In 2021 Nexi, the leading Italian paytech company enabling digital payments for the entire country, confronted the challenge of becoming a pan-European market leader. 

Two of the other leading European players in the field of digital payments, Nets (Nordics) and Sia (Europe), were acquired with the ultimate aim of creating synergies across the continent. 

It was the biggest M&A operation, in terms of size of the deal (ca. €8bln), an Italian company had ever conducted in the history of the country.

Framing the Challenge:

Ensuring alignment around a shared ambition

In this context, Nexi faced an even greater challenge to ensure integration across elements of the newly founded group: from the management of the portfolio of brands, ranging from corporate to product and service brands, to its strategy and positioning, all the way to its internal culture and engagement.

The ambition?

To transform Nexi into the digital engine of the cashless transformation.

Every Payment will be digital. It’s only a matter of when not if it will happen.”

Paolo Bertoluzzo, CEO, Nexi

A blend of agility, quantitative and qualitative methods 

All three methodologies had to be leveraged to understand the opportunities and complexities of the project. Human Truths spoke to the core needs within our team, which spanned across countries, languages and emotional responses to the news of the upcoming merger. A further challenge was COVID-19 which meant that everything had to be run digitally.

Agile collaboration, aided by driven, profound consumer-thinking, enabled us to tap into our and Nexi’s diverse thinking to craft a strategic framework which everyone felt comfortable with.

Maximizing stakeholder value and delivering future-proof solutions was also key to our success. Economics, Human Truths and Experience methodologies were tapped into synergically to give the Nexi’s leadership the confidence to make moves ranging from brand architecture to corporate identity.

The whole project was a 10 month long sprint, ultimately enabling Nexi to be ready for its future as pan-European leader from day one of the merger’s clearance.