Frequently asked questions

Little, in the first year. The team, the customers and the location stay. First we learn how the company works. What is shared with the group, such as purchasing, systems and training, comes later, at each company’s own pace.

We do not buy companies in order to cut teams. The sale does not touch employment contracts: the employer is still the same company, with the same seniority and the same conditions. In a company like this, the value is in the people.

At first, yes. The name carries weight with customers and is not changed lightly. As the group grows, its companies may come together under a common brand, and that is a decision prepared over time and with the people there.

Yes. Every conversation is private, from the first email onward, and nothing is shared without your agreement.

Yes, in full. Part of the price is usually paid over the following years, and for an owner who stays through the transition that part is tied to that period. The terms are in writing from the letter of intent onward.

To find out whether it might one day make sense for you to sell us your company. We buy companies to keep them. We do not lend money or act as intermediaries. We explain it all in Did you receive an email from us?

We signed our first letter of intent in September and expect to complete the purchase by the end of the year. We do not say which company: the confidentiality we promise you, we keep with others.

We invest our own capital and that of a small group of private investors, alongside Portuguese banks.

Yes. The first conversation is private, we ask for no documents and no record is kept beyond what you tell us.

Call Pedro on +351 918 330 399, or write to us.

Nobody can tell you without seeing the accounts.

Value comes from two things: the company’s normalised result, and a factor applied to that result. Almost all of the serious discussion is about the first. Normalising means taking out what is yours rather than the company’s, and adding the cost of hiring someone to do what you do today for nothing. In companies of this size those corrections frequently move the result by more than 30%, in both directions.

After that there are still steps between the value of the company and the money that reaches your account at completion: the debt and the cash at the closing date, the working capital the company is handed over with, and the part of the price paid over the following years.

We look at the accounts and put an indicative value in writing early, before asking you for weeks of work.

Four to eight months. What decides it: shareholders in agreement, the property separated from what belongs to the company, the accounts in order, and how fast each side answers the other.

The first conversation takes an hour or two. The phase that weighs on you most is diligence, and that is six to ten weeks. You can stop at any point up to signature.

When you want to.

In a sale of quotas the employer does not change: the company is the same, the contracts are the same, and nothing has to be notified to the staff because the shareholders changed. If instead the transaction is a trespasse or an asset sale, the rules are different and more demanding. Confirm it with your lawyer.

In practice most owners tell the team after the contract is signed, in person, on the same day or in the days that follow. We will not ask to speak to your people before that. During diligence we will only need to know, on paper, who the site managers are, how long they have been with you, and how each one’s succession is planned.

When that moment comes, if it helps you, we will be at the company on the day you tell them, to answer the questions that are for us and not for you.

We buy all of the quotas. Part of the price is usually paid over the following years, and the terms are written into the contract from the start. Talk to your contabilista certificado before you decide, because the shape of the deal changes what is left after tax.

You can stop up to the day you sign the sale and purchase contract. Until then, all that changes is how much work has already been done.

In the first conversation, and until our value is in writing, it costs nothing and there is no obligation on either side. The confidentiality agreement signed before we see any accounts binds you to secrecy, not to selling.

The letter of intent does not oblige you to sell either. It obliges two things: secrecy, and not talking to other buyers for a period, which has to have a date. Stopping there costs you the time you put in, and nothing else.

From the moment diligence begins, money is being spent by someone, and so who pays for what is agreed in writing before there are costs, and not halfway through. If you stop after that, you owe your share of the work already done, and nothing beyond it.

Once the contract is signed, you can no longer stop without consequence, and what that consequence is stands written in the contract itself, in numbers, before you sign it.

Most conversations do not go ahead.

If we stop, everything you gave us is returned or destroyed, whichever you choose, and we confirm it in writing. That includes accounts, contracts, customer lists and payroll schedules. Any analysis we made from those documents is destroyed with them.

Two exceptions. What was already public before we spoke stays, because it was not you who gave it to us. And the advisers who worked on the process keep their own file for the period their professional rules require.

We will not contact you about a sale again unless you tell us to, and nothing we learn is used for any other purpose.

We count on you through the transition, usually two to three years, to pass on what you know to the people who stay. After that, you can step back, or we can agree that you stay connected, as an adviser or helping us find the next companies. Whatever we agree is written down before completion.