What Does "M&A Finance at Google" Actually Mean?

My LinkedIn title says "M&A Finance at Google" but I realize most people probably wonder what that actually means day to day.

M&A stands for Mergers and Acquisitions. It's how companies buy or sell other companies — or parts of them. YouTube and Fitbit, for example, were once their own companies until Google acquired them. That's what M&A does.

Each deal has two sides: the buy-side (the acquirer, like Google) and the sell-side (the company being acquired like YouTube).

But closing a deal is often a massive team effort. It involves corporate development, legal, tax, HR, finance, and more.

My role sits in M&A Finance. We lead financial diligence and act as a bridge between our corporate development team and internal finance teams: FP&A, accounting, tax, treasury, and others.

It's a bit like buying a house. You've got the buyer and seller, but also a realtor, an appraiser, an inspector. In M&A, we're like the appraiser and inspector rolled into one, making sure the price checks out and we fully understand what we're buying.

Now imagine all of that but with tighter timelines, more complexity, and much higher stakes.

Every deal teaches you something new — about strategy, about business, and about how organizations really work. And it's that constant learning that makes me love what I do.