For owners & founders
Selling or bringing in an investor is probably something you will do once. Here is how it works, what it is worth, and what happens afterwards.
Speak with an advisorWhy use an advisor
The first offer an owner receives usually comes unsolicited, from a buyer who already knows what the business is worth to them. Without another interested party in the room, you have no way of testing that number. Our job is to create the competition that gives the price meaning.
Read moreExit options
Owners often assume the choice is sell everything or carry on alone. In practice there is a spectrum: a majority sale that keeps you involved, a minority investor who funds growth, a management buy-out that keeps the business with the people who built it. Each has a different consequence for your money and your time.
Read moreSelling to a strategic buyer vs private equity
A competitor buying you for synergies and a fund buying you for growth will often quote a similar figure. What differs is how much lands at completion, how long you stay, and what happens to your team. The headline is where the conversation starts, not where it ends.
Read morePreparing your business
Clean accounts, a forecast you can defend, contracts that transfer, and no surprises hiding in the detail. Work done in the six months before a process begins moves the final number more reliably than anything negotiated at the end of one.
Read moreValuing your business
It is a range, and the range depends on who is buying. Most mid-market businesses are valued on a multiple of EBITDA — profit before interest, tax and accounting write-downs — but the multiple a buyer will pay depends on how badly they need what you have.
Read moreHow the process works
Nine to twelve months, five stages, and nothing moves forward without your sign-off. Preparation, approach, offers, diligence, completion — you will know at every point what happens next, how long it takes, and what is being asked of you.
Read moreOwner stories
Owners who sold a business they built, describing what they expected, what surprised them, and what they would do differently. Told by role and sector, because most prefer not to be named.
Read moreQuestions owners ask
If your question is not here, ask a partner directly. There is no charge for a first conversation.
Ask a partnerNine to twelve months from the day you decide to start, to the day the money arrives. Preparation takes six to ten weeks, approaching buyers four to eight, offers four to six, and diligence and documentation eight to fourteen. Processes that run faster usually had preparation done well in advance.
Two to four hours a week for most of the process, concentrated in preparation and again in diligence. Management meetings with serious buyers take a day each. We handle the rest, because the business has to keep performing while the process runs — a dip in trading during a sale costs more than almost anything else.
Only when you decide. In practice a very small group is told early because diligence needs them, usually your finance lead. The wider team is normally told at signing or completion. Nothing is announced without your written approval.
Not one number, but a range — and the range depends on who is buying. Most mid-market businesses are valued on a multiple of EBITDA, which is profit before interest, tax and accounting write-downs. A buyer who needs what you have will pay a higher multiple than one who merely likes it, which is why running a proper process matters more than any valuation on paper.
A modest monthly retainer covers the work of preparing and running the process, and the substantial part of our fee is a success fee payable only on completion. If the transaction does not complete, you do not pay the success fee. Both are agreed in writing before we start, with no variable we have not shown you.
Buyers are approached under a codename and see nothing identifying until they have signed a non-disclosure agreement. Your exclusion list is absolute — named competitors are never contacted, whatever the interest. Inside the business, only the people diligence genuinely requires are told, and only when it is required.
Speak with an advisor
A first conversation costs nothing and commits you to nothing. One of the partners will reply personally, usually within two working days.
Speak with an advisor
