Ensuring staff are trained to "deal with deals" and "being diligent' about due diligence are two of the tips for buying a business to come from professional services firm Towers Watson after the release of data highlighting that companies carrying out mergers and acquisitions last year outperformed the market by over three percentage points.

The firm's latest Quarterly Deal Performance Monitor shows that 2009 proved to be "a reasonably good year" for companies completing a business sale – particularly for those which closed domestic deals.

Based on analysis by the UK's Cass Business School, the monitor is the only study of mergers and acquisitions that tracks performance globally. Acquirers covered in the analysis for 2009 outperformed the MSCI World Index by 3.2%, with especially strong performances recorded in the healthcare and financial services sectors.

"Our results should not only give potential acquirers greater confidence in considering deals in 2010, but also highlight some of the elements that influence deal success," commented Marco Boschetti, head of international consulting at Towers Watson, who pointed out that domestic deals present acquirers with less complex integration challenges.

Mary Cianni, a leader of Towers Watson's global M&A practice, added that prospective business buyers appear to be "playing it safe" and focusing on acquiring targets in their home market at the moment, although credit markets are beginning to open up again.

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