Paul Waite, Rowan Group
Paul is chief executive of executive search and leadership advisory business Rowan Group. He specialises in CFO and board level appointments into growth-oriented SMEs.
We’ve had our journeys. One was a reverse takeover which was all about an exit for our business that went wrong, and then the second journey, which is where Rowan, which I founded and built, became part of the LCap Group about two-and-a- half years ago.
What I’d say from my learning is that it does all start with the vision, the valuation plan and what the end game looks like, because that effectively is what you’re going to become part of.
Is that end game a house of brands that post-acquisition live and breathe, develop and grow, or are we all becoming part of one and we’ve all got to put those cultures together?
From my perspective when we dealt with the first take takeover two worlds came together and we very quickly found out that the actual overall structure didn’t work for us.
When we took investment the second time around, I spent six months with the founder of that business. I met his kids, his cat, his dog, we spent time together, really got under the skin of, ‘Do we fundamentally get on?’ because when you’re in sale mode, everybody gets on and they’ll tell you anything.
You’re basically getting married to these guys. You’ve got five or ten years on a journey. If you don’t fundamentally get on it won’t be successful or enjoyable.
When it came to the deal with LCap, we’d just done a deal to go fully private again because I wanted to be in charge of my own destiny and I thought, ‘That’s it, I know where I’m going’.
And then a couple of weeks later I get a knock on the door from these new guys from London. We got together and we were thinking, ‘Yes, this feels right.’
Then you get into deal mode and you get the advisers all coming in and we found a number of divisions starting to occur. Not because of what we were like, but just because of the different salient points of advisers.
One thing that worked really well is that we got everyone in the room, because quite often when you’re talking to your adviser independently everyone sees the potential risk. And then you get back in the room together and you realise all these risks can be mitigated if you just talk them through.
Craig Cheetham, Fellwood Advisory Craig is founder and director of debt advisory practice Fellwood Advisory, which works with a range of SMEs.
As the owner of a company coming up for a sale it’s really important that you start to think about what you want out of it. Do you want to go on day one? Do you want to stay in and take it to the next level but you need some more backing?
These kinds of things really determine who you ultimately want to sell to because you’ve got loads of options. You’ve got competitors, people coming in that do something similar and might be a supplier of yours, you might have
private equity that wants to take it in a different direction, you might want to sell it to management, you might even want to sell it to your own employees and have that employee-owned model.
All of those options start with the questions, ‘What do you want out of it first of all and where do you want to take the business to?’ It is about getting your business ready.
It’s also, as a management team, getting that mindset ready about what you want out of it.
Advisors do different things. Sometimes they’re a translator, sometimes they’re a negotiator, sometimes they’re a counsellor, just someone to sound off at on a call.
But sometimes they just need to get out of the way. Sometimes you just need to go, ‘I think the principals just need to speak here’. Normally when that happens everything gets cleared out a lot quicker. A good adviser will know when to just back off and just let the principals speak.
When it comes to integration, from the buyer’s perspective it’s getting its arms around the people and the customers, making sure that what they thought they’d bought they have bought, and then from a lender’s perspective it’s more about integrating the finances and starting to report that as quickly as possible as a group.
We can support
PROUD SPONSORS OF LANCASHIRE BUSINESS VIEW’S DOING THE DEAL
PROUD SPONSORS OF
LANCASHIRE BUSINESS VIEW ’S DOING THE DEAL
Get in touch for a confidential chat: Get in touch for a confidential chat:
Stephen Robinson
Stephen Robinson 07796 233181
Director – Corporate Finance 07796 233181 01254 350407
Ryan Bilsborough 07796 233329
stephen.robinson@
pmm.co.uk
stephen.robinson@
pmm.co.uk www.pmm.co.uk
ryan.bilsborough@
pmm.co.uk
rt with....
Management buy-ins and buy-outs Buying a business Selling a business
Employee Ownership Trusts (EOTs) Strategic business planning / fundraising
Business valuations
LANCASHIREBUSINES SV
IEW.CO.UK
23
DOING THE DEAL
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70
