Exiting your business can be a minefield to navigate without the right M&A Advisory firm.

Our goal is to find the optimal buyer for you and your company. Because of this we take the time to create buyer lists that are well researched. We look for strategic, financial, family offices, off-shore entities, and synergistic buyers that are the best fit for your business and will offer the optimal deal for you.

We don’t use a “cookie cutter”, one list fits all approach that far too many M&A Advisory firms use. We take the time to get to know you, your financial goals/needs, and your company to find the buyers that make the most sense. And any list we create you have final approval before we send any information out.

Closing a transaction requires detailed negotiations over the details that ultimately affect you, the seller. Our deal teams not only are familiar with all the hurdles that can arise during negotiations, their years of experience allow them to overcome them.

This makes our M&A professionals powerful allies during the most crucial stages of business negotiations. Our clients often tell us that without our negotiation skills, and helping them to understand what the buyers are really after, their transactions would most likely not have closed.

Every client we work with is unique, having personal, financial, and business goals that require the structuring of their deals to match their needs. Our M&A advisors are diligent to first learn and understand the needs of our clients and their businesses. We then work hard to negotiate the optimal deal for each; transactions that provide not only the valuation required, but deal structures that protect the client (and their business) over the longer term.

Quite often our clients have extensive holdings in multiple companies and industries. Most of the time they have divestiture needs in order to cash out some holdings and retain others. This is especially true of Family Offices that hire us to divest them of specific companies in industries that they no longer have interest in operating.

Our M&A Advisory firm has significant experience in setting up limited auctions for each holding and in some cases, dividing companies up into separate entities in order to obtain the best deal for our clients.

A typical due diligence checklist consists of 200-300 detailed questions covering every aspect of your business from sales and marketing to HR, IT, operations, and accounting. This is where most deals can fall apart, especially if the documentation is not accurate, and readily available, to provide buyers. Prior to entering this critical phase, our deal teams work hard to get the client and his/her team ready for the types of questions that will often arise.

The last three to four months of a transaction, which is when due diligence occurs, can be the most grueling for a business owner. This is where you need an M&A firm skilled in getting clients across the finish line, despite the hurdles that often arise during due diligence.

Exiting a company via an acquisition/merger event is a huge undertaking for most business owners. Far too many put off planning to sell their business because the task can be very daunting. Our M&A professionals have decades of collective experience working with business owners through this often emotional, stressful process. We work closely with our clients to ensure that the exit plans pursued and deals structured are optimal for them.

Just as each owner is unique, so too are each of our transactions. We tailor our exit planning advice to your specific needs.

The level of documentation required to close a transaction is daunting unless you have the experience our deal teams have. We not only prepare the evaluation of your company (and the Roadmap for Enhancing Value you can use to grow your business) we also create all sales documentation. This includes the Offering Memorandum, Confidential Business Profile and Non Disclosure Agreement that we have all potential buyers sign before providing any detailed information on your business.

Buyers like working with our M&A advisors because they know our documentation will be accurate, thorough, and in a format that allows them to easily discern why your opportunity makes sense for them.

A leveraged M&A transaction is where the company is purchased by the buyer with a combination of debt and equity. Usually the acquired company’s cash flow is used to secure and repay the borrowed money. This deal structure is often used by equity firms to fund their transactions, although strategic buyers use it as well when necessary. As leaders in M&A, we are skilled in creating leverage buyouts that both achieve the most value for the client and ensure that the company has adequate cash flow to cover the debt.

Management buyouts need to be carefully constructed so that the exiting owner is ensured of full payment over time. The sad reality is that many entrepreneurs, without professional guidance of an M&A advisory firm, often accept management buyout structures that require up to 90% of the value paid to them over a 5-10 year time frame. If the business takes a turn for the worse (or if the new owner-managers are not capable), future payments can be at risk. Our deal teams are experienced enough to craft deal structures that protect our clients for these scenarios.

Also known as partial sales, minority equity transactions are usually structured so that the seller is allowed to retain a minority equity position in the company, while receiving payment for the equity transferred to new owners. This is a great structure if you are willing to stay with the newly recapitalized business for an indefinite period of time.

It allows you to participate in a “second bite of the apple” when the much larger entity is sold (or taken public) at a later date and you have experienced M&A advisors to guide you through the process. Typically equity firms “bolt” these partial sale transactions onto their existing platforms in order to grow the platform company.

At Generational Equity, we represent the seller in most transactions. We serve privately held business owners who take confidence in knowing that we understand and represent their goals and interests. Our clients are introduced to over 30,000 potential buyers through DealForce, our proprietary buyer network, and our buyer database. We are consistently ranked by Refinitiv as the #1 middle market investment bank in deals closed for valuations up to $25 million, #2 for valuations up to $100 million, and in the top 10 in deals valued up to $500 million. Generational Equity has the experience, the success, and the integrity you can trust when choosing an advisor for the sale of your business.