We think the SME market doesn’t get the level of attention and professionalism it deserves from a capital allocation perspective. We aim to address that gap by bringing our decades of institutional expertise and professionalism while allocating capital to the owner managed businesses. Importantly, we believe we put the seller’s motivation at the centre of any transaction, and aim to find a way of achieving mutually beneficial outcomes.

We aim to keep the process as simple and straightforward as possible. Crucially, we aim to potentially close in a couple of months or less.

The first stage is to identify the goals of the seller while assessing the historical strengths and opportunities in the business.

The second stage is for us to ascertain how we can crystallise the value the owners have generated in the business, while creating a clear path for ongoing value creation in the business.

The third is to execute.

We are not really interested in asset stripping or wind-down situations. We believe there is more value to be extracted from running our acquisitions, pretty much as they are, but with small financial and operation tweaks that can yield better outcomes over time. Thus our main aim is to keep all employees, staff and operations intact and motivated towards achieving the same goals.

We typically try and buy well running businesses that need small tweaks rather than big changes. Employees and staff are thus paramount to any business we acquire. So our preference is always that they stay as is; we need them happy and focused on helping the business continue its success. In many cases, this might actually be an opportunity for some to step up into more senior roles within the company.

No, not typically. We want to make an ownership transition as seamlessly as possible for all key stakeholders - employees, customers, suppliers etc. The less the disruption in the business, the better the outcome.

Fortunately, there are very established precedents for valuation multiples used for businesses depending on their sector, focus etc. We adhere to the valuation metrics set by the market for that particular industry or sector; and then tweak it either up or down depending on the uniqueness of the business in question.

Ultimately, the safeguards that we can all rely on in our day-to-day lives – legal, operational etc. – apply to our work. But it’s worth noting that we as buyers are more exposed to risks than those actually exiting. For example, there have been several situations of investors buying businesses where there was fraud etc. Ultimately, we recognise that there are risks to both parties, and our goal is always to try and minimise these risks by being as transparent and accountable as possible and expecting the same in return from all stakeholders.

Absolutely, we’re open to partial stakes.