How To Prepare Your Company For Sale When It’s Not For Sale

In my 20-plus years in the M&A business I’ve learned three truths of the trade: A business is always for sale. A business is not always prepared to be sold. And culture, strategy and price matter most in an acquisition. What’s your culture? It’s everything from whether you have high variable pay vs. high base pay to whether you compensate certain roles substantially more to whether the business is run with the expectation of generating higher or lower profits. It’s difficult to integrate culturally divergent businesses.

The CFO role is incredibly more complicated than it was 20 years ago. You have to deal with extreme stock market volatility, trade wars, inverted yield curves and vendor consolidation, not to mention technologies, like blockchain and AI, that have game-changing potential. Fast-growing companies are increasingly being approached by private equity (PE) firms, bankers and strategic buyers, including competitors.

Unless you’re prepared to respond proactively, evaluating serious preemptive offers is going to be disruptive — sometimes enough to destroy business momentum and even harm long-term shareholder value.

Read the full article here.

previous post Back to Articles next post

31 Jan 2023

Rising Interest Rates Chill Private Equity Pace

After a year of strength on the private equity front, 2022 is now in the rearview mirror and industry professionals anticipate a downgrade in performance for the coming year.   Despite the fluctuations of the past few years, private equity has withstood the challenges relatively well. However, in certain areas such as exit activity and...

18 Jan 2023

IT Industry Titan John McKenna Announces Retirement 

Congratulations to John McKenna, CEO of ConvergeOne, who announced his retirement today after 14 years at the helm. John has been an integral part of the IT industry for more than 30 years, and his leadership, dedication, and hard work have set the gold standard as a titan in our industry.   John’s tenure at...

21 Dec 2022

Happy Holidays – The 2022 martinwolf Annual Letter

View a pdf of this letter here.    Dear Clients, Partners, and Friends, It’s hard to believe we are closing the books on our 25th year in business. Looking back at our extraordinary colleagues past and present, hundreds of clients, and a global network of buyers and friends, I want to start this year’s letter...