Our process

We meet, with no obligation on either side. You tell us about the business, and we tell you whether it is the kind of company we are looking for. Most first conversations lead nowhere.

An hour or two, once. Bring no documents, prepare no numbers, and sign nothing in order to have this conversation. We give you our answer, whatever it is, usually within two weeks.

If there is interest on both sides, we put in writing an indicative value and the terms on which we would buy, early, before you have spent weeks on it. The final price starts from that value, is adjusted for cash and debt at completion, and moves away from it only if diligence shows a company different from the one described to us.

Three to six weeks from the first conversation to having the value in writing. It costs you a second meeting and a short list of questions, most of it answered with documents that already exist. Detailed accounts are not needed at this stage. It is also here that the confidentiality agreement is signed, before we look at the first accounts.

We spend a short period understanding the company properly: its accounts, its customers, how the work actually gets done.

Six to ten weeks, beginning once the letter of intent is signed. It is the phase that weighs on you most: a full day with us, at the premises and on a job, on whatever date suits you. Two or three short meetings with whoever keeps your books. The rest is gathering documents that already exist, and that part need not be yours.

We buy the company in full. Part of the price is usually paid over the following years, tied to the transition.

Four to six weeks, overlapping the end of the previous phase, and almost all of it with your lawyer beside you. Two things are settled at this stage: how the price is adjusted at completion, and what leaves the company before it, knowing that whatever leaves adjusts the price by the same amount.

When we complete, the team, the customers and the location stay. As little as we can manage changes on the first day, and whatever changes afterwards is discussed first with the people there.

Two to three weeks settling conditions, and then one morning. It is contract and registration: a sale of quotas is made by private document, signed and completed on the same day, and registered at the commercial registry within the following two months. A treasury adjustment is normally left open, calculated in the two to three months afterwards, and the amount at stake is held back until it is settled.

We do not buy to sell. The business joins a group of companies we intend to keep, and whatever we promise you about the years after, we are the ones who will still be there to keep it.

Your own role after the sale is set out in The continuity of your company.

Little changes in the first month, but some things do: we take responsibility for the company, we join its management, and there is a monthly report of sales, results and cash. Through the years of transition we work side by side with you, and your role and the calendar are agreed in writing before completion.