Business Mergers Advisory Service

BUSINESS MERGERS

Has an opportunity arisen for your business to merge with another? Or do you want to actively pursue a merger as a route to grow your business? Our business merger advisory service and M&A experts give you the best chance of making your merger a successful one.

Book a meeting

Services

Buying A Business

Business Mergers

TRUSTED BY businesses across the UK

Read success stories

See all deals

WHAT IS BUSINESS FINANCING?

Business financing is sought for the specific purpose of funding business activities which can include acquiring another business, management buy-ins (MBIs) or buyouts (MBOs), a key growth project or investing in new talent. Business financing can help you achieve your growth objectives and strengthen your overall competitive advantage. But the process to secure the business funding you need can be time consuming, stressful and costly if you don’t know what you’re doing.

‍

HOW MUCH BUSINESS FUNDING CAN YOU SECURE?

We work with ambitious, high-growing businesses that have funding needs in excess of £2m and regularly approaching £100m. Our clients’ needs will typically be for sophisticated finance products such as cash flow based lending or private equity investments. Our value lies in helping clients access funding that relies on confidence in future trading and cash flows.

See our deals and success stories.

‍

BUSINESS FINANCING – COMMON PITFALLS TO AVOID

We can confidently say that every client we engage is unprepared to take their funding proposal to their business bank or alternative lender. Being unprepared for funder scrutiny can significantly reduce, or entirely remove, your chances of getting the financing your business needs. Remember: first impressions count.

The typical things that can erode funder confidence and jeopardise your chances of securing a business loan include:

Failure to fully explain your business model;
Poor articulation of your value proposition and value drivers;
Inconsistent, incoherent or incomplete financial information;
Weak financial modelling and incomplete forecasts;
Presenting a biased view of business performance and risks;
Funding proposals that exclude critical information that lenders expect to see.

‍

BUSINESS FINANCING – HOW TO DO IT RIGHT

To successfully secure business funding, whether it’s for supporting an acquisition, a management buyout (MBO) or organic growth, you need to achieve four fundamental objectives:

Create a robust business plan that stands up to funder scrutiny;
Articulate that plan in a balanced and coherent way that funders can understand;
Approach the right partners to fund your plan as part of a competitive process;
Defend value in due diligence and close your transaction professionally.

Funders need to have confidence in you and your business from the beginning to the end of the financing process. In the world of funding first impressions matter and you must never approach the funding market until you are truly ready. We can help you get ‘market-ready’ to deliver funder confidence and secure the funding you need to make your ambitions happen.

‍

BUSINESS FINANCING ADVISORY SERVICES

By using our business funding advisory services, our experts will ensure that your funding proposal stands up to funder scrutiny and gives you the best chance of securing the funding you need. Below are the different types of business financing we can help you secure:

WHAT IS A BUSINESS MERGER?

A merger is a transaction where two or more businesses are bought together to form a new legal entity. Importantly, all or the majority of the shareholders of the individual businesses undergoing the merger become shareholders in the new legal entity. This co-ownership brings with it specific transactional challenges which do not feature in a traditional acquisition of one entity by another.

‍

Mergers do come with risk if poorly handled which can have a significant impact on both businesses. For a merger to be successful, the merging companies and their shareholders require similar values, a shared purpose, aligned cultures and goals.

Learn more about acquisitions by visiting this page at Investopedia.

‍

WHO DO WE WORK WITH?

We work with SMEs that have the ambition to grow by merging with another business.

‍

See our deals and success stories.

‍

BUSINESS MERGERS - COMMON PITFALLS TO AVOID

A Harvard Business Review study suggests that 70% to 90% of mergers end up in failure*. And that is not a surprising fact since bringing two organisations together brings added complexity in this type of transaction.

‍

Here are some common mistakes organisations make when attempting to merger with another business:

‍

Failure to define strategic goals of the combined business ahead of the merger;
Overestimating the synergies between the merging organisations;
Insufficient due diligence resulting in the acquisition of unexpected risks;
A lack of cultural fit leading to employee performance issues and lower levels of customer service;
Taking an unstructured approach to assessing the market thus failing to find the most suitable merger targets;
Poor communications to employees and customers resulting in apathy and mistrust;
Mis-aligned management teams with differing opinions on the direction of the new organisation;
Lack of post transaction integration plan to best protect cultural values and employee performance.

*Source: M&A: The one thing you need to get right; Roger L Turpin, Harvard Business Review June 2016

‍

BUSINESS MERGERS - HOW TO DO IT RIGHT

To successfully merge with another business, your M&A strategy needs to achieve these key objectives:

‍

Clearly define your purpose, vision and values and take a structured approach to matching those criteria to with potential merger targets;
Develop a professional approach strategy to deliver the conversations you need with potential merger companies;
Develop a robust internal and external PR plan to ensure all stakeholders are communicated the right information at the right time;
Make sure you have a well-defined process from offer to completion that ensures risks are identified and mitigated;
Develop a robust post-merger integration plan that protects value.

‍

BUSINESS MERGER ADVISORY SERVICES

Our 'buy-side' experts add value by ensuring rigour in your business merger strategy and executing the transaction to a successful completion. Working collaboratively with our advisors will ensure that you identify the right organisation to merge with, negotiate and secure the deal, protect confidentiality and manage associated risks. This is what our advisory service offers:

‍

EVALUATING YOUR MERGER STRATEGY

We can help you consider if a business merger is right for you. We can help you through the complex set of considerations including cultural alignment and the significant changes that will come about in corporate governance, especially the issues that come with shared control.