In-house vs outsourced corporate development: which fits?

Large companies have corporate development teams: people whose full-time job is finding, assessing and buying businesses. Founder-led businesses with £5m to £100m turnover usually do not. The work falls to the owner and a finance director who already has a full-time job.

So when you decide to grow by acquisition, there is a practical question. Do you build a deal team, hand the work to an outside team, or carry on doing it yourself? The right answer depends on three things: how many acquisitions you plan, what capability you already have, and how much of your own attention you can give it.

When does each model make sense?

Doing it yourself can work for a single, simple deal where the business came to you, you know the sector well and you have a good accountant and solicitor. The risk is time. Acquisition work tends to arrive in bursts, and the bursts rarely suit the day job. See how much management time an acquisition needs.

Hiring in-house tends to fit when you expect a steady flow of deals over several years, often a buy-and-build strategy with several bolt-ons (businesses that fit alongside yours) a year. There is enough work to keep a specialist busy, and the knowledge they build stays in the business.

Outsourcing tends to fit when acquisitions are occasional, when you want to start in weeks rather than months, or when you want to test whether a programme works before committing to permanent headcount.

A hybrid of the two is common: an internal sponsor who owns the decisions, supported by an outside team doing the heavy lifting.

What work does a deal team actually do?

Before comparing models, it helps to list the work. Whoever does it, someone has to.

The last row matters. Integration is led from inside the business by people your staff and the seller's staff already know or will work for. An outside team can plan and support it, but should not lead it.

The in-house roles

A corporate development team in a mid-sized business usually builds up from one of three roles.

Analyst. Researches markets and businesses, builds financial models, prepares papers for the board and keeps the pipeline up to date. Usually a few years out of accountancy, banking or consulting. Needs direction from someone more senior.

M&A manager. Runs individual deals day to day: first conversations with owners, information requests, valuation, coordinating advisers and the timetable. Can work fairly independently on a deal but often needs senior support on negotiation and board decisions.

Head of M&A or corporate development. Owns the acquisition strategy with the chief executive, leads negotiations, manages advisers and the board relationship, and builds the team. Often recruited from investment banking, corporate finance or a larger company's deal team.

What do they cost?

Salaries vary widely by location, sector and background. Recruiter Morgan McKinley's 2026 salary guide gives these London figures for permanent roles:

These are London base salaries. Outside London they are generally lower, and bonuses and benefits come on top. We have not found a robust published figure for analyst salaries, so we have not quoted one.

The salary is not the whole cost. Employers also pay National Insurance (15% on earnings above £5,000 a year in 2026 to 2027, according to HMRC), pension contributions, any bonus, recruitment fees and the cost of your own time recruiting, managing and supporting the hire. A single person also needs advisers, data and research tools to be effective.

How long does it take to hire?

Longer than most people expect. Writing the role, running a search, interviewing and agreeing terms takes time, and senior candidates commonly have notice periods to serve. A new hire then needs time to learn your business, your sector and how you make decisions before they are fully productive. In our experience, it is worth planning on several months between deciding to hire and having someone running deals.

There is also a capacity limit. One person can only run so many conversations at once, and a single hire leaves you exposed if they leave.

How do the models compare?

Neither model is cheaper in every case. It depends on how many deals you will do, for how long, and what each model would cost in your situation. Outsourcing does not remove executive decisions either: the decisions stay with you whichever model you choose.

Two illustrative cases

These examples are illustrative and fictional. The assumptions are stated so you can test them against your own position.

A first acquisition. A £12m engineering business wants to buy one complementary business in the next two years. Assumptions: the owner and finance director have not done a deal before; the board would not commit to more than one or two deals in that period. A permanent head of M&A would be underused once the search was done and could be hard to retain. Outsourcing the search and deal management, with the finance director as the internal lead, fits better. If the first deal goes well and the appetite grows, the decision can be revisited.

A recurring programme. A £60m services group wants to make two or three bolt-ons a year for five years. Assumptions: the board has approved a funded programme; the businesses are similar enough that a repeatable approach makes sense. Here there is enough steady work to justify building internal capability, perhaps an M&A manager reporting to the finance director. The group might still use outside support to get started while it recruits, to run the search across the market, or to add capacity when several deals are live at once.

The hybrid model

For many founder-led businesses, the best answer is neither fully in-house nor fully outsourced.

A workable hybrid looks like this:

• An internal sponsor, usually the chief executive or finance director, who owns the criteria, chairs regular decision meetings and is the face of the business to sellers.
• A named integration lead inside the business for each deal.
• An outside team that runs the search and the pipeline, prepares the analysis, manages the process and coordinates the lawyers and accountants.
• Specialist advisers for financial, tax and legal due diligence, as you would need under any model.

This keeps the decisions and relationships where they belong while giving you capacity you would otherwise have to hire. It also means you can grow into a permanent team later, once you know what the programme really needs.

If you want a team without the hire

The Acquisitiv Expansion Partnership is our outsourced corporate development service. We run your search, your pipeline and your live deals month after month and coordinate your lawyers and accountants, while you make the decisions and keep running the business. If you are weighing it against a hire, that is a good conversation to have before you commit to either.