How to Build a Team for Capital Raise or Business Sale success

Posted on: January 13th, 2013

Team building is essential to build a prosperous company – be it on the sales, customer service, or operations side. Team building and partnering is also the secret sauce to fostering strong client relationships.

Team building becomes critical when you are planning a capital raise or sale of the company. You will need an accounting team leader, a legal team leader and a transaction team leader.

Typically these three roles will be played by your CFO or Controller, your in-house counsel or corporate attorney and your investment banker respectively. Most companies have only one or two members of the team in place and try to wing the process without the third man on the field.

Most deals are tough to manage and even more difficult to close. A well rounded three person team will enable you to accelerate the process and ensure a successful closure.

A good team consists of veteran players who have been through many deals. Unlike a football team where youth often prevails, the older guys are superior at scoping out risks and managing any issues through to completion.

Build your deal team with veteran guys who have suffered the slings and arrows of prior transactional battles. They are battle-tested and unflinching in the heat of the fight!

As the Fed decides to ease interest rates, middle market acquisition financing structures will benefit in a number of ways. The underlying values of middle market companies will increase leading to a higher enterprise value and lower loan to value ratios for existing portfolio companies of acquisition financing lenders.

The role of acquisition financing is infrequently elevated above a functional transactional one. When a business needs financing to acquire, they go to the market and source acquisition financing to supplement their equity investment to close the deal. Despite existing in many different forms, acquisition financing is rarely explained in terms of the value it brings to the acquirer.

Acquisition financing underwriting usually focuses on business and financial issues that underpin the stability of cash flow. Providers of acquisition financing usually validate the durability of a company’s competitive advantage and the depth of its resource base. Environmental issues are usually not a major part of the analysis in today’s service and technology-based economy.