Strategy AI agent · M&A deal filings
M&A Deal Filing AI Agent
Corral the deal record out of the drafts, mailboxes and drives it scattered into, test each answer against the document behind it, and hold the assembled file for the officer who signs.
- Typical delivery
- 4–6 weeks
- Deployment
- Your stack
- Two oaths
- Two filings
- After launch
- Agent Care
What this agent does
Assembles the filing, never the certification
In
- 01
A deal is signed, and § 803.6 gives the certification to an officer or director.
- 02
A waiting period opens, and 15 U.S.C. § 18a(b)(1) runs thirty days from receipt.
Reason
- 03
A cash tender offer or a bankruptcy sale runs fifteen days under § 803.10.
- 04
A Second Request lands, and § 803.6(b) puts a fresh certification on the response.
- 05
A filing is pulled, and § 803.12 wants it recertified within two business days.
Decide
- 06
A covered transaction approaches, and § 800.401(g)(2) sets thirty days before completion.
- 07
A declaration is filed, and § 800.405(b) starts thirty days of assessment.
Out
- 08
A notifiable outbound deal completes, and § 850.404(c) leaves thirty calendar days.
- 09
Execute write actions only inside the approval boundaries agreed during implementation.
Product statement
Assembly and both clocks belong to the agent. An officer or director certifies the HSR filing; the chief executive or a duly authorized designee certifies the CFIUS one.
Example workflow
One filing, evidence to certification
- 1Deal documents receivedDraft decks, bankers' models, board papers or custodian mailboxes
- 2Filing context assembledThe transaction, the parties standing behind it, the regime it answers to and the day its clock started
- 3Answer evidence draftedThe question, the documents under it, the gaps and completeness
- 4Controls appliedCustodian checks, de-duplication checks, clock checks and completeness confidence
No human action required
Stages 1 to 4 run unaided, and no certification happens at any of them — the agent is only assembling, and counsel enters at the completeness gate.
Passes to the certifying officer for signature.
Adds a deal counsel read first.
Counsel review
The filing is held with its answers, its gaps and the custodians they came from.
Certify · Append evidence · Send to counsel review
Certified — by an officer or director
- 6Deal and filing records updatedOnly where write access and records policy allow it
- 7Outcome evaluatedDocument completeness, clock coverage, counsel corrections and what review found
Corrections
Each counsel correction is counted in the evaluation.
What should not run autonomously
Human approval stays in control
Outside the boundary — human approval required
8 items
- Certifying an HSR filing under 16 CFR § 803.6.
- Signing the § 800.204 certification for a party.
- Deciding that a document is not responsive.
- Choosing who holds actual authority to sign.
Automation boundary
Agent acts unaided
- ✓Build the custodian map from the officers and directors named.
- ✓Collect and de-duplicate the deal documents held.
- ✓Run both clocks and raise the two-business-day recertification.
- ✓Test every drafted answer against the document held.
No certification is signed and no filing goes out except by a named person, on approval.
- Judging whether a transaction is reportable.
- Telling an agency the filing is complete.
- Predicting whether early termination will be granted.
- Changes to the filing, the log or the custodian map.
Example output
One filing answer, annotated
Our deal-underwriting due-diligence copilot reconciles asset-level financials for a discretionary investment committee; this assembles sworn narrative evidence for a government filing on a statutory clock.
Filing answer · single question
Illustrative example- Answer
- Competitive overlap, Item 4(c)
- Recorded as
- Drawn from the documents each custodian named
- Question
- Overlap narrative
- Evidence of record
- Board paper, 3 August 2026
- Confidence
- Held uncertified
- Held for
- The certifying officer, by name
As received
Taken from the board papers and the custodian mailboxes — it reaches no further than those sources.
What the record holds
- Board paper
- Bankers' model
- Draft strategy deck
Why nothing is sworn here
Whether the file is true, correct, and complete is a sworn judgement.
What the score decides
Below the configured threshold a filing picks up a counsel read before the officer sees it.
Action
CertifyAppend evidenceSend to counsel reviewValue
Where AI adds value
The same four claims, placed at the point in the workflow where each one applies.
Where the value lands
Value 01 – 04
Every answer
From the custodian who holds it
Where the evidence is used
A filing record is not a legal opinion: this page shows what was collected and what each answer rests on, and it makes no call on whether a deal is reportable.
One deal, several oaths
The HSR certification is notarised or made under penalty of perjury per 28 U.S.C. § 1746; CFIUS and outbound run under 18 U.S.C. § 1001.
What was checked, and not found
The presidential decision window is statutory and does not sit in Part 800, so it is not stated here; no CFIUS fee or penalty figure is published on this page; and the declaration wording of the EU Form CO and Form FS-CO could not be retrieved verbatim, so neither is quoted.
Build an evidence trail
The filing, the document behind each answer and the officer who certified stay together.
Integrations
Typical integrations
Five system groups connect to the same agent. Which of them are in scope is decided in discovery.
Deal team and custodians
- Mailboxes
- shared drives
- Draft decks and deal-team files
Board and governance
- Board portal
- minute book
- Board papers and resolutions
Corporate structure
- Cap table
- entity register
- Ownership and control records
Agent
M&A deal filing evidence
- Reads the requests
- Assembles the file
- Holds for the officer
Advisers and data rooms
- Bankers
- counsel
- data room
- Models, drafts and exhibit lists
Observability & evaluation
- OpenTelemetry
- Langfuse
- Supported monitoring/evaluation sources
Integration availability depends on the client's existing systems and API access.
Agent controls
Six turnstiles between the model and the officer
Six turnstiles in a row, the last admitting fewest. Whoever passes them all is named in the map below.
L6 · Outermost — last line of defence
Inward → L1 · closest to the model
- L1 – L2
- Test whether an answer may stand
- L3
- Leaves the certification to a named person
- L4 – L5
- Keep the filing and the document behind it
- L6
- Holds the filing uncertified when signals degrade
How Nestack evaluates it
Evaluate the whole assembly — not only the filing answer that comes out.
Coverage runs the whole depth of the workflow, and every layer is cut by slice.
Surface — the filing an agency reads
- E1Final-output evaluationDid the answer record what the documents actually show?
- E2Step-level evaluationDid the agent read the right custodian, the right request and the live entity list?
- E3Tool evaluationDid it read and write the correct deal record and the correct filing?
- E4Confidence calibrationDo low-confidence filings actually attract more counsel corrections?
- E5Slice evaluationHow does performance change across specific filing types?
- E6Business outcomeHow many filings needed a correction before the officer certified?
Floor — the filing the company answers for
Failure modes
Where each failure originates in the agent
Seven failure modes, each pinned to the stage where it first shows.
Agent lifecycle
Direction of processing →
01 · Retrieval
1 mode
- LT-03
Stale custodian read
The custodian list is not the one the deal team now works to.
Stage gathers
The deals, the requests, the drafts and the dates
02 · Reasoning
2 modes
- LT-04
Answer asserted, not shown
An answer is drafted with no document under it.
- LT-06
Vacated form read as live
A withdrawn form is worked as the operative one.
Stage proposes
The answers, their documents and completeness
03 · Tool / write
2 modes
- LT-02
Thin filing passed forward
A filing moves on without the counsel read.
- LT-05
Wrong party on the document
The document is bound to the other side of the deal.
Stage writes
Only where write access and approval policy allow it
04 · Output
1 mode
- LT-01
Sworn, evidence unrecorded
The file shows a signature but not the documents under it.
Stage returns
The filing an officer signs and an agency reads
05 · Change / Version
1 mode
- LT-07
Silent deadline drift
A release shifts the deadline while the filing keeps the old one.
Stage tracks
Model, prompt, filing rules and answer fields
- Sev-1 · a filing certified on no document
- Sev-2 · wrong document reaches the filing
- Sev-3 · source degrades, filing held back
Affected slices
Second Request responses absorb the corrections
A filing-level document-completeness figure can read clean while Second Request responses carry most of the rework. Nestack reports the correction rate by filing type, not only in total.
Slice performance — reported separately, not only in aggregate
Illustrative example| Slice | Failure rate | Lift | Lift vs. threshold | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Second Request responses | 11.1% | 3.7× | Review | |
| Initial HSR notifications | 7.9% | 2.6× | Review | |
| CFIUS declarations and notices | 4.9% | 1.6× | Watch | |
| Outbound notifications | 1.9% | 0.6× | Normal |
Bar: correction-rate lift vs. outbound notification baseline · scale 0–4.0× · tick marks the 2.0× review threshold
2 of 4 slices over threshold
Evidence-linked improvement
What a missed document costs
A loop ends when the missed deal document has become a case the next release must pass. That suite is what the next filing assembled is measured against.
Improvement cycle · five stages
Switchback — the path turns at Improve and returns at Learn
- 01
Detect
Correction rate rises on Second Request responses.
- 02
Diagnose
The deal folder on one director's laptop that the sworn filing said did not exist is read back until a single cause remains.
- 03
Improve
Number the change; the filings that drove it are filed underneath it.
- 04
Verify
Each touched filing case is run once more, and one red holds it back.
- 05
Learn
It stays on as a standing test, and the collection rules travel with it.
Learn → Detect
The return edge. The next filing is measured against a suite one case longer.
Typical build scope
Twelve workstreams across six weeks
The build scope read against the delivery timeline. Week structure follows the six-week plan — discovery, sources, filing assembly, evaluation, integration, then production validation and handover.
Workstream
Week 1Week 2Week 3Week 4Week 5Week 6
- 01Certification-boundary and custodian-map work.Week 1
- 02Custodian, board and adviser sources.Week 1, Week 2
- 03Answer-to-document and clock-coverage mapping.Week 1, Week 2
- 04Deal document ingestion.Week 2
- 05Answer, document and party binding.Week 2, Week 3
- 06Completeness scoring and review routing.Week 3
- 07Officer certification workflow.Week 3, Week 4
- 08Data-room and mailbox integration.Week 5
- 09Custodian and completeness cases.Week 4, Week 5
- 10Guardrails and certification controls.Week 4
- 11Filing-trail instrumentation.Week 5, Week 6
- 12Deployment, documentation and Agent Care handover.Week 6
12 workstreams · 6 weeks · bar shows the weeks a workstream is active — several run in parallel
Final scope and sequence confirmed in discovery
Engagement tiers
What each tier includes
Rows are the capabilities named in each tier's scope. Higher tiers include everything below them.
| Capability✓ in scope · — not at this tier | PilotOne deal, one regime | ProductionProduction filing workflow | AdvancedMultiple regimes / entities |
|---|---|---|---|
| Introduced at Pilot | |||
| Answer assembly to your requests | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Certifying officer release | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Deal-document baseline | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Introduced at Production | |||
| Reporting by filing | — | ✓ | ✓ |
| Officer sign-off workflow in your systems | — | ✓ | ✓ |
| Approved write-back | — | ✓ | ✓ |
| Custodian-mailbox integration | — | ✓ | ✓ |
| Introduced at Advanced | |||
| Multi-party filings | — | — | ✓ |
| Cross-regime evidence packs | — | — | ✓ |
| Large document estates | — | — | ✓ |
| Multi-regime deadline controls | — | — | ✓ |
| Build price | From $5,000 | From $8,000 | Custom quote |
- Final build price
- Confirmed after discovery based on integrations, workflow complexity, document volume, approval controls and deployment requirements.
- Separate from build
- Build pricing is separate from recurring Agent Care, which covers managed monitoring, evaluations, incidents and verified improvements after launch.
What we need from you
What you bring, and what we build with it
Each input maps to a piece of build scope and a week in the delivery timeline.
You bring
We build with it
01Your live deals and the custodians behind each one
→Custodian mapping and document capture
Week 102Representative board, adviser and deal-team documents
→Document binding, answer logic and the filing baseline
Week 203Your standing filing procedure and the signers it names
→Request mapping, clock binding and the automation boundary
Week 104Access to relevant APIs, feeds or exports
→Custodian, board and adviser source assessment, then integration setup
Week 205Filings you would not want sworn
→Completeness cases and the evaluation run
Week 406What no filing record may settle
→Completeness scoring, review routing, guardrails and release controls
Week 307An officer or director who possesses actual authority
→Release to the certifying officer, then pilot and production validation
Weeks 5–6
Nothing else is required
Deployment, documentation and Agent Care handover are ours.
Delivery timeline
Four phases across six weeks
Phase widths follow the effort each one costs rather than the grid, so one week does double duty.
Phase
W1
W2
W3
W4
W5
W6
- DiscoveryW1
- BuildW2 – W3
- EvaluateW4 – W5
- Pilot & LaunchW5 – W6
Week focus
W1Filing workflow discovery, custodian mapping and the automation boundary
W2Source integration and the deal-document baseline
W3Answer assembly, clock logic and release controls
W4Evaluation suite, completeness cases and failure-mode testing
W5Data-room integration, pilot filings and targeted corrections
W6One deal cycle run under the certifying officer, then Agent Care handover
- Reading the band
- Each bar spans the weeks its own work is named for, and the fifth holds two because the work does.
- At the end of W6
- When the filing record validates, Agent Care takes the agent on.
- Duration
- Six-week plan shown · typical delivery 4–6 weeks depending on scope confirmed in discovery.
Next step · Strategy AI agent
Build a deal filing agent around the document nobody remembered writing.
Show us one answer and the document under it. Only § 803.6 says who certifies an HSR filing: any officer or director of the filing person, possessing actual authority. Under § 800.204 and § 850.203 it is the chief executive or a duly authorized designee.
- Typical delivery
- 4–6 weeks
- Deployment
- Your live deals
- Two oaths
- Two filings
- After launch
- Agent Care available
Nestack Agents · M&A deal filings
AGT-CS-02 · Agent Care available after launch