Buy side
For buyers
The company you actually need is almost never for sale. Its owner has not decided anything yet and does not know they are talking to someone who wants to buy. The whole difficulty on the buy side is reaching those owners and opening a conversation that has a second chapter.
A buyer who asks “which companies are for sale” gets the same dozen names everyone else is looking at. After that the only way left to win is price.
The question that works is different: which company would solve my problem. The answer rarely matches the listings. It almost always leads to owners nobody has called yet.
How it works
The best targets sit off the market
Which is good news for a buyer who can wait.
The owner of a healthy company has no reason to announce a sale. The ones who announce are usually the ones who have to. So a buy-side process starts by building a list, not by reading offers.
Who never advertises
Companies with repeatable profit, an owner in good health and no time pressure. Which is exactly the group worth approaching.
What follows from that
A first conversation is not a negotiation. It is an invitation to think about something the owner has not been thinking about.
How we reach them
One at a time, without naming the buyer and without hurrying. Anyone who calls with an offer ready usually ends the conversation within a minute.
Who we work with on the buy side
Companies growing by acquisition
- Looking for a competitor or a supplier
- Entering a new region or segment
- Have the capital, not the time to search
- Need discretion in their own market
Foreign investors
- Entering Poland through an acquisition
- Unfamiliar with local pricing and practice
- Need someone who negotiates in Polish
- Have to assess tax and regulatory risk
Managers and search funds
- Buying one company in order to run it
- Funding assembled from several sources
- Need process structure, not only contacts
- Usually buying for the first time
Funds
- Have a thesis and hunt a target for it
- Want companies outside running processes
- Outsource the search, keep their own team
- Care about list quality, not list length
The first conversation with an owner who was not planning to sell decides everything that follows.
How it runs
Six stages on the buy side
01
Criteria
Size, sector, region, profitability and whether the current owner should stay. The sharper they are, the fewer conversations lead nowhere.
02
Long list
A market sweep and a list of companies that fit, whether or not they are for sale. Usually dozens to a few hundred names.
03
First approach
We call one at a time, without naming the buyer. Most will say no, and that is the ordinary cost of this stage.
04
First assessment and offer
Initial numbers, a preliminary valuation, a letter of intent. By now the buyer should know their ceiling and the point at which they walk away.
05
Due diligence
Financial, legal and tax review, then translating what it finds into price and into the wording of the agreement. That is a separate skill.
06
Negotiation and closing
Structure, security, the pricing mechanism, conditions to closing. Integration starts before signing rather than after it.
How many you look at to buy one
The proportions differ by sector, but the order of magnitude holds. Worth knowing before you start, because it saves disappointment in month three.
A no does not close the subject. An owner who says “I have no intention of selling” today is sometimes the best name on the list two years later, because they have had time to think. Which is why we do not delete the list after the first round.
Buying a company in Poland as a foreign investor
Investors from outside Poland are usually surprised by the same thing. On the other side of the table sits a founder who built the business and still runs it, so they are discussing their life rather than an asset. A formal offer emailed without a prior conversation rarely gets an answer.
The second thing is documentation. It is uneven and it lengthens the review, but uneven documentation does not always mean risk. You have to tell disorder from a problem, because those are two different things and only one of them should change the price.
The third, and the most underrated: language. A conversation held in Polish by someone who understands both sides shortens a process more than any amount of scheduling. We work in Polish, English and Swedish, and there is more on the entering the Polish market page.
Frequently asked
About buying a company.
How long does it take to find and buy a company?
From a few months to two years. The review and negotiation take three to five months. The rest is finding the target and bringing the owner to the point where they want to talk.
How many companies do you look at to buy one?
With well-set criteria, out of a list of several dozen a dozen or so reply, a handful enter talks and one ends in a transaction. With criteria set too broadly the list grows and the result stays the same.
How is buy-side advisory paid?
A monthly fee plus a success fee on transaction value, as on the sell side. The difference is that most of the work falls in the stage where no specific target exists yet.
Can targets be approached anonymously?
Yes, and usually they are. The adviser makes the first approach without naming who is behind the enquiry. The buyer’s name comes out after a confidentiality agreement, sometimes only at the second meeting.
For sale
Companies we are mandated to sell
The name and full details reach the buyer after a confidentiality agreement is signed. If you are looking for something that is not here, write to us - most of our deals start with a buyer’s enquiry rather than a listing.
See also
- How to sell a company, to see what happens on the other side
- Red Flags checklist, twelve areas to examine in a review
- Due diligence and search fund in the glossary
- What an M&A adviser costs