Finding buyers and strategy

Who will buy?
With some two million active companies registered in the UK, six million in Europe, millions of potential individual buyers, institutional buyers and of course MBI and MBO teams, where do we start?

Trade buyers are a good place to start.  Often they will pay a premium price as they will have the advantage of gaining synergies from the acquisition.  These can arise through offering opportunities for increasing market share, cross-selling of products and services, providing access to new markets, rationalising costs and overheads, improving buying power, exploiting technological advantages and know how etc.  They may also have on board the management resources and finance to integrate your business relatively easily.

However, there may be drawbacks as the sale and due diligence process may give them access to sensitive information which if the sale is not completed, may be used against your business subsequently.  Accordingly, we will also consider seeking other types of buyers such as private individuals and institutional buyers.

Marketing strategy
Following our appraisal of your business and some initial external research, we will put to you our recommendations as to how and where the business is marketed.  This will take account of: -

• The need for confidentiality;

• The size, nature and location of your business; and

• The type of buyers likely to provide best value.

When seeking trade buyers we will target sectors likely to pay a premium for the business.  Often this will not be direct competitors, but businesses that offer complementary products or services or in related industries.  These companies may be attracted by the opportunity value of your business  enabling them, for example, to gain access to new markets or new products for their existing markets.

Our research facilities will enable us to provide you with a list of targets buyers with details of their business, financial resources and performance.  We will then seek your agreement for us to make direct approaches to them.

Confidentiality
We are conscious that it may be essential to disclose information on your business and the fact that you wish to sell only to carefully selected parties.

Accordingly, in our initial approaches to buyers, whether direct approach or through intermediaries or by advertisement, we will seek to keep the identity of your business from being revealed, and limit the information provided to a bare minimum.  Here our aim is to provide sufficient information as to create interest, but at the same time to avoid providing information that will damage your business.

In all cases we will only release information to those parties authorised by you, and who provide a written undertaking of confidentiality in a prescribed form.