The Business Negotiation Podcast with Fexingo: Deals, Contracts, and Closing Conversations

In this episode, Lucas and Luna examine a 2019 buyout of a mid-market tech firm where the buyer tried to shave seven figures off the offer by aggressively re-trading the working capital peg during due diligence. The target walked, the deal cratered, and the buyer ended up paying more for a lesser competitor a year later. They break down the psychology of value extraction versus value creation, why...

In this episode of The Business Negotiation Podcast, Lucas and Luna explore the strategic power of making concessions—using a real-world case study from a 2025 pharmaceutical licensing deal between a mid-sized biotech firm and a larger partner. They break down how a calculated concession on royalty rates unlocked a faster timeline and preserved a critical relationship, while the other party's refu...

In Episode 5 of The Business Negotiation Podcast, Lucas and Luna dive into one of the most overlooked traps in M&A: the earnout clause. Using the cautionary tale of a SaaS founder who walked away from a $12 million acquisition with only $3 million because of vague performance metrics, they break down why earnouts fail, how buyers structure them to shift risk, and what sellers can do to protect the...

Lucas and Luna dissect the single most dangerous clause in any negotiation: the material adverse change clause, or MAC clause. Using the real-world collapse of a $1.2 billion acquisition in the pharmaceutical sector as their case study, they explain how a seemingly standard clause buried on page 47 of a 300-page contract allowed the buyer to walk away hours before closing. Lucas walks through the...

In this episode of The Business Negotiation Podcast, Lucas and Luna explore the underestimated risk of drafting too perfect a contract. They examine a 2023 manufacturing acquisition in Ohio where the buyer's legal team insisted on a 74-page agreement that attempted to cover every possible contingency — only to have the seller walk away one week before closing. The deal collapsed not over price or...

In this episode, Lucas and Luna dissect the 2019 merger that collapsed between two mid-tier medical device companies, MedCo and SurgiTech. The deal was valued at $340 million and had cleared regulatory hurdles, but it fell apart over a single indemnification clause about legacy product liability. The breakdown led to $40 million in combined legal fees, lost synergies, and a two-year stock slide fo...

In this debut episode of The Business Negotiation Podcast, Lucas and Luna dissect a single deal to reveal how negotiation really works behind closed doors. The anchor: AT&T's $85 billion acquisition of Time Warner in 2016—a megadeal that survived a DOJ antitrust challenge and became a textbook case in strategic trade-offs. Lucas walks through the four phases of a high-stakes business negotiation:...