One on One with OMNI's Frank Bernhard

The merger and acquisition market is way down from its peak a few years ago, but there are still significant consulting opportunities for well-positioned firms. To better understand the upside to the down M&A market, Consulting 's One-on-One sat down with Frank Bernhard, OMNI Consulting Group's managing principal for its telecommunications, media and technology practice. His 20 year-old M&A firm grew by 7.8 percent in 2009, far outpacing the sluggish market.

Consulting: The M&A advisory marketplace is dominated by very large, global consultancies, where does your 100-person firm fit?

Bernhard: We're technology economics. Our niche is helping potential buyers quantify the value of the technology of another company. It's not uncommon for a buyer to want the technology and discard the rest of the company. We are hired to determine the economic lifecycle of a company's technology. Is their technology maturing or could it be just at the cusp of taking off? Our job is to unravel the equation to understand where a possible acquisition target's technology is in the curve. And it's not just about the one company's individual parts. We also look at how they might integrate into the buyer's existing products. We've seen a lot of acquisitions of middleware companies in the last two decades, where a product company buys a very small piece to make their bigger machine more valuable.