Buy-Side M&A
We source acquisitions and investments for private equity, family offices and institutional investors.
You engage a standing mandate we call The Origination Seat. Your acquisition or investment criteria are written down in numbers and agreed before the first name is shown. We then work the whole set of companies that fit them, marketed and non-marketed, and deliver screened opportunities with the sourcing on the page. Every screening memo ends with a written recommendation, and some of those recommendations are to pass.
Who we act for
Four kinds of buyers run mandates with us.
Private equity
Platform acquisitions, add-ons and full roll-up programmes sourced against your fund's thesis. The box is written with your investment committee, add-on criteria are held per portfolio company, and introductions are made to owners before a banker is hired and an auction sets the price.
Family offices
Direct acquisitions and long-hold investments, sourced to your criteria and pace. Patient capital is a real advantage with founders who care who buys them, and the approach is made in that language, before a banker is hired.
Institutional investors
Direct and co-investment deal flow against your written mandate. Screened opportunities arrive with the sourcing and reasoning your committee can check, and nothing outside the mandate is presented.
Private credit funds
A fractional origination seat for funds without a titled origination owner. The lending box is written down with your committee, and screened borrowers that meet it arrive each quarter, with a weekly pipeline call.
Roll-ups and buy-and-build
A buy-and-build needs the next acquisition found while you are closing this one.
The platform is one transaction. The thesis underneath it needs another five or ten, bought inside an investment period that is already running, and each one has to fit the platform it is being added to and not only the sector. That is a sourcing problem which does not end when a deal closes.
Sourcing add-ons from marketed processes puts you in an auction for every one of them, at the pace a banker sets. Across a programme of six acquisitions, the gap between an auction price and a direct approach compounds through the whole platform, and it is usually what decides whether the multiple arbitrage the thesis assumed survives contact with the market.
The Origination Seat is a standing mandate, which is what this work needs. Add-on criteria are held per platform company and revised as the platform grows, the engine works the whole set of companies that fit them, and owners are approached before a banker is hired. The pipeline refills while you are closing the deal in front of you.
- Criteria per platform
- Add-on criteria are written and held separately for each platform company, and revised in writing as the platform grows into new geographies or capabilities.
- Standing coverage
- Coverage does not pause between acquisitions. The count of remaining targets inside each platform's box is reported monthly, so you learn that a box is running out before it does.
- One approach per owner
- Where you hold several platforms, the contact record is held across all of them, so the same owner is never approached twice by two of your portfolio companies.
- Sequencing
- Approaches are paced against your capacity to close, so the pipeline matches what the platform and its management team can absorb.
Where the names come from
Sourcing runs on the engine and on direct coverage.
The firm runs a proprietary origination engine that reads the market continuously and surfaces the companies with a reason to act. An approaching maturity is one such signal; ownership age, fund life and succession are others. When a name reaches your pipeline, the evidence that put it there travels with it.
Where the public record stops, coverage is built directly: research and sequenced outreach against your written criteria, so we reach the non-marketed companies in your box before anyone else is looking for them. The founder operated companies before he advised them, and the first approach to an owner is made in those terms.
Who this is for
Mandate criteria
The mandate works when the criteria can be written down and the coverage can be measured against them. These are the parameters we work within.
- Client
- Private equity sponsors, including those running roll-up and buy-and-build programmes, family offices, institutional investors, strategic acquirers and private credit funds without a titled origination owner.
- Criteria
- Your acquisition, investment or lending criteria written down in numbers and agreed before the first name is shown. An exclusion list is honoured from day one.
- Coverage
- Marketed and non-marketed. The companies that fit your criteria are covered before they are marketed, with the sourcing shown for every name.
- Cadence
- A weekly pipeline call, and a monthly report recording what was found and what happened to it.
Process
How The Origination Seat runs
The mandate runs in five steps, against criteria written down before the first name is shown.
Criteria
Sector, size band, structure, geography and exclusions written down in numbers and signed off with your investment committee before the first name is shown. This document governs everything that follows.
- Written criteria, agreed and signed off with the committee
- Exclusion list loaded before any outreach
Coverage
Before anyone is approached, you receive a written count of what the box can produce: the companies inside it, how many show evidence they will need to act and the source cited for each figure, including what the data cannot show.
- The universe inside the box, counted and sourced
- What the data cannot show for your box, stated in the same document
Decision pointIf the box holds too little to keep a standing mandate busy, you read that at the start, and the criteria can be widened before the first approach goes out.
Screen
Each opportunity is screened against the box before you see it, with the sourcing and the reasoning on the page.
- Screening memos covering the company, situation, timing and fit
- Each memo ends with a written recommendation, to pursue or to pass
- Nothing outside the box is presented
Approach
Introductions made before a process exists, first conversations arranged, and support through your evaluation and negotiation. One adviser makes every approach on the mandate, so an owner hears from the same person each time.
- Warm introduction with context on both sides
- Support through evaluation, structuring and negotiation
Review
The monthly report records the universe covered, the contacts made, the conversations held, the memos delivered, the passes listed next to the pursuits and the outcome of every name carried forward.
- Weekly pipeline call between reports
- Passes recorded alongside pursuits, with the reasoning kept
Decision pointThe report is where the box itself gets reviewed. When a sector or size band produces coverage and no pursuits over several months, the criteria are changed in writing before the next month runs.
Questions clients ask
Before a mandate starts
How is this different from a data platform and an analyst to run it?
A data platform returns every company that fits the box, most of which have no reason to transact this year, and your analyst then has to guess which of them might. Our coverage starts from the smaller set showing evidence they will need to act, because a loan matures, a fund is late in its life, or a succession is forming, and each name arrives with that evidence on the page.
How is this different from hiring a buy-side banker?
A buy-side banker runs one acquisition. This is standing coverage of your whole box, and where a specific deal needs execution support, that work is scoped within the mandate.
What does the credit-fund version look like?
A fractional origination seat. The investment box is written down with your committee, and you receive screened borrowers each quarter that meet it, with a weekly pipeline call.
We are running a roll-up. Can you hold criteria for several platforms at once?
Yes. Each platform gets its own written criteria and its own pipeline, and the monthly report covers them separately. The contact record is held across all of them, so one owner is not approached by two of your portfolio companies, and where two platforms could both take the same company, you decide which one makes the approach before it is made.
Do you work for both sides of a transaction?
One side per situation. Mandates are bounded by sector, size and geography, the conflicts protocol is signed before anything is presented, and where our sell-side practice holds a mandate that fits your box, that conflict is disclosed before anything else happens.
Will you recommend passing on deals you sourced?
Yes, in writing. Every screening memo ends with a recommendation, and some of those are to pass. The monthly report lists the passes next to the pursuits, so you can see the screen working over time.