When CEOs and boards begin to look for an M&A Advisor, they often start in one of the big financial centers like New York or Boston. For most transactions under $100 million, I believe an M&A Advisor more than a couple of hours away by car is usually a bad choice. One of the dirty [...]
I’m pleased to announce a special version of the Exit Strategies Workshop in Victoria, BC on May 22, 2013. Attendees consistently rate the Exits Workshop as one of the best. Here’s some feedback from previous atteendees: http://www.exits-workshop.com/testimonials.html Two Victoria resident CEOs will describe the inside stories on their very successful exits. Mark Longo, a Viatec [...]
My bookshelf has an entire section of books on valuation. Even though I deal with valuation every day, I haven’t looked at any of those books for at least a couple of years. It’s just not a process you need reference books for. Most of the time, acquisition valuations can even be done without a [...]
This is the first time I’ve described all of the things we did wrong the first time I tried to sell a business. It’s also the story of the first time I lost several million dollars. How Not to Sell a Business – Don’t Blow The Biggest Deal of Your Life This is a talk [...]
The Sellability Score was created by my friend John Warrillow who also wrote Built to Sell. If you are thinking about selling your business now, or at some point in the future, the Sellability Score will be valuable to you. A Sellability Score is an external, unbiased evaluation of your business’s worth on the open [...]
I’m convinced that only about 25% of the businesses that could be sold actually end up successfully exiting. Yes. I believe that about three out of four times when a company could have been successfully sold, a sale did not end up happening – ever. And most of the time, it was avoidable. The Frustrating [...]
Information about M&A advisor fees for selling a business is surprisingly difficult to find. I’m not sure why other M&A professionals are reluctant to discuss fees and even less sure it makes sense in today’s online world. This is a current summary of the fees I’m seeing in the market. This is an updated excerpt [...]
What is an ‘M&A Advisor’? Why haven’t you heard the term more often? One of the speakers at a recent Exit Strategies workshop in Vancouver (a well-respected senior M&A lawyer) commented that up until a couple of years ago he’d rarely heard the term ‘M&A Advisor’. He went on to explain that while there were [...]
Highlights of Part 6 – Financing Strategy for Maximum Exit Value: Axel Christiansen introduction. And why is he so funny? What is Sub Debt and who is it useful to? In what types of exit transactions? Company value as a multiple of EBITDA. The “New Normal”. Seven reasons to create a financing package. Vendor notes [...]
In the fifth presentation at the Exit Strategies Workshop 2011, Blake Corbett discusses public buyers. Highlights of Part 5 – Public Buyers: Who has cash? Who is spending it? What this means for small cap technology and industrial companies Public companies are acquiring to drive growth Public company cash balances are the highest in ten [...]
