Selling your own company is an emotional and organizational challenge: You have built up your company over decades and have now decided to retire from company management. However, you still stand for your company with your name, so it should continue in your spirit.
A fair price for you is the aim of the transaction, but you also want to be able to look employees and customers in the eye after the sale. Taurus Advisory brings decades of experience in advising on company sales and a large network of wealthy and entrepreneurial investors. We may already know your perfect transaction partner - if not, we will find him. That's a promise!
These 7 steps will lead you to your goal.
Every company sale has its peculiarities, but for your success you will need a structured approach. We guide you safely, personally and highly professionally through the entire transaction process together with experienced lawyers and tax advisors.
It is not short and quick success that counts, but excellence and sustainability. For this reason, we have a success rate of almost 100%.
Which topics are of particular interest to you in the context of an acquisition process? We have worked out some exciting aspects for you.
You may be surprised that we as M&A advisor do not shout "WE" loudly at this point but say "IT DEPENDS".
We believe that every profession should do exactly what they are excellent at and practice on an ongoing basis. We are masters of corporate transactions. Your trusted tax advisor will be an excellent partner to you and us during the process when it comes to accounting and tax issues. We therefore maintain a very collegial relationship with him or her in every transaction. As a rule, however, corporate transactions are not his core competence. And brokers, IHK advisors or online platforms are the appropriate partners if your company is not yet big enough or profitable enough to be intensively supported by an M&A advisor.
From a certain company size, a professional M&A advisor is the right choice
You should mandate a professional M&A advisor when your company has reached a certain size. One indication of this could be the operating result (EBIT), which should not be less than 750,000 €. Sometimes, even less profitable companies with an exciting growth story should mandate an M&A advisor to receive the best possible price for the company. Why? For you, the sale of your company is usually a one-time event. When a lot of money is involved or a complex family situation exists, the stakes are high. Nothing should and must go wrong!
This makes it all the more important to generate transaction security and achieving an optimal result with regard to all relevant sales conditions. Therefore, it is important to prepare professional sales documents, to have a good knowledge of the market, to maintain direct and personal contact with potential buyers and to professionally evaluate your company from a transaction perspective, to mention some examples. Negotiating an optimal purchase price is also one of the tasks of an excellent M&A advisor. Keywords here are, for example, the bridge of the enterprise value to the equity value (equity bridge), tax-optimized reinvestments, an earn-out or attractive interest-bearing vendor loans. These are topics that require a great deal of experience to negotiate and can easily account for 50% of the total purchase price. Who will ensure the successful execution of the transaction and all other issues, that may be relevant for you in the future?
Taurus Advisory has a great track record in selling companies
We strongly believe that this can only be done in a meaningful way with the support of a professional M&A advisor. We have specialized in the execution of company sales for more than 15 years and our day-to-day business is to ensure that no critical issue is lost or suboptimally negotiated. We ensure transaction security through our professional project management, a broad market approach adapted to your needs, and by maintaining a bidding competition until the signing of the SPA. This bidding competition enables you to react appropriately to inappropriate request of individual potential buyers. In this way, you never have to accept demands that are not acceptable to you. With our structured M&A process, we increase the probability of a successful deal.
If we have raised your interest, please feel free to contact us and let us plan the perfect strategy for your company sale together. We are looking forward to it!
You are unsure whether you want to leave the company promptly after a sale? You are not yet sure whether you want to sell 100% of the shares? Or whether you want to retain an interest in your company after a sale so that you can participate in the positive development of the future? For every desired structure there are solutions as well as the optimal buyer.
In the case of a complete sale and the desire for a rapid operational exit, a strategic investor may be the more suitable buyer as he already brings his own existing structures to the table. The situation is quite different if, for example, you want to proactively develop the company together with a partner in the coming years. In this case, a financial investor with whom you can implement a buy and build strategy may be the most suitable candidate.
However, you should not leave out a possible buyer group from the outset in order not to block potential opportunities.
Many of you are regularly confronted with more or less serious letters of intends (LOIs) of potential buyers of your company. Are you interested in selling your company? We have a serious and suitable buyer for you!
This may be true in individual cases, but does it help you achieving your goals? Transaction security may be achieved if, after months of negotiations, you finally agree to the buyer's terms. The buyer may have once come up with an attractive offer but it lost more and more value over time. After all, the buyer knew full well that he had you "on the hook." And after many weeks and months of negotiations and endless documentation your original energy had suffered and you wanted to get to the end. This should never happen to you! There is too much at stake for that.
A structured bidding process ensures transaction security
With our approach of a structured bidding process, we achieve a competitive situation until the signing of the SPA. Although this is costly - even for us - it guarantees you transaction security in addition to an attractive purchase price. This also applies, if a bidder changes his mind before the signing or approaches you with demands that you cannot accept. Usually, you and we go into management meetings with five to six parties. At this point, all of them have made an indicative purchase offer that is of interest to you. Out of these five to six parties, you will select two to three potential buyers that will be able to to conduct the Due Diligence. Until the binding offers are submitted, we will keep these parties in the process and treat them identically in terms of information sharing and transparency. Only in the final negotiation phase you will reach a deal with the best buyer for you.
Almost 100% success rate of our company sales processes and highly satisfied clients speak a clear language. If you are interested in exchanging experiences with former clients, please do not hesitate to contact us.
In general, in recent years we have seen a large number of buyers on the market who are looking for medium-sized companies. That's good news! But are they serious? Are they a good fit for your business? Are they creditworthy? And what happens after they acquire your business?
These are just some of the questions that need to be clarified promptly at the beginning of a sales process. At Taurus Advisory, we have been working intensively on precisely this issue over the past few years. Because we know how important it is for our clients to include attractive potential buyers in a transaction process in order to achieve an optimal result in the end. As part of our network, we therefore maintain personal contact with over 600 potential investors in the DACH region.
IN ORDER TO BE ABLE TO PROVIDE YOU WITH ATTRACTIVE POTENTIAL BUYERS, WE MAINTAIN PERSONAL CONTACT WITH OVER 600 POTENTIAL INVESTORS IN THE DACH REGION.
We know our contacts, their investment focus and their reputation very well. We maintain the appropriate capacities for regular background discussions and can thus generate a qualified list of potential buyers very quickly. You benefit from our network and our close contacts to strategic investors, financial investors, industrial holdings as well as family offices. If required, we also approach international investors in a targeted and individual manner. In this way, we ensure that no buyer is lost as the best fit.
If you have any further questions regarding our network, please do not hesitate to contact us.
Due diligence is designed to ensure that all the facts are known and that there are no hidden risks for the buyer after the acquisition. Standard due diligence topics typically include commercial, financial, tax and legal. In some cases, it may also make sense for buyers to invest in technical and environmental due diligence, especially for manufacturing-driven companies. Due diligence is usually performed by experts from external third parties such as auditors, lawyers or tax advisors.
Compiling and preparing documents is stressful for company sellers. But after submitting an attractive purchase offer, the buyer side justifiably expects a deep insight into your company in order to protect itself from future risks. As M&A advisors we support you right at the beginning of the process with a detailed list of documents, neatly structured according to the different areas of review that will be relevant for due diligence. This gives you enough time to prepare the required documents accordingly. During the due diligence process we will operate a professional data room management for you. This includes the selection of a suitable data room provider, the filling of the data room with all documents and the coordination of all visitors to the data room. We also take care of answering all questions - of course, we coordinate this with you in advance. At this point, you should always be very transparent, as mistrust could arise if answers are withheld without justification.
We will be happy to explain the details in a personal meeting.
The valuation of your company is a complex topic. There are many factors that influence the value of the company. These include the attractiveness of the products and services, the financial situation, as well as the size of the company and the future growth potential that a potential buyer will value. Numerous different subjective factors with individual weightings for each potential buyer have an influence on the respective final valuation.
As M&A advisors we will give you a clear picture of the range in which the value of your company could be under transaction conditions right at the beginning of our client relationship. For this purpose, we use our decades of experience from hundreds of transactions, analyze comparable transactions in the near past, compare similar companies and their (stock exchange) valuation, use currently available market multiples or value using the discounted cash flow method. But other valuation methods such as an LBO model can also be useful. The ultimate goal of this intensive and time-consuming valuation is to give you a secure feeling for where a realistic and at the same time fair value for your company lies.
Our analysis enables you to better evaluate the incoming offers in order to then discuss and negotiate with each other on an equal footing, respectfully and trustfully.
If you have any further questions about valuation, please do not hesitate to contact us. We will support you actively.
Often, when shareholders think of selling their own company they think of an overall sale. However, under certain circumstances a two-step sale can be very advantageous.
To a buyer it shows that you believe in the future of your company. Nevertheless, as a seller you can secure some parts of your money and at the same time participate in the positive development of the future. The terms of sale for the minority shares are usually already fixed in writing at the time of the sale of the majority. Thus - under normal circumstances - the economic risk is manageable, but the potential is incomparably higher.
This type of scenario is particularly suitable if you, as the seller, see your company continuing on a growth path, possibly want to remain operationally involved and this also makes sense from an age perspective. Financial investors usually plan further acquisitions with the purchase of a new platform as part of a buy-and-build strategy: so-called add-ons. Among other things, this approach makes it possible to generate scale, achieve better value creation, apply new technologies and expand regional presence. It thus offers great potential for the seller which would not be possible in this way without a strong and entrepreneurial investor at his side. But also operationally, the investor will set all the levers in motion to generate an optimization of the company's value. You as the investor will profit from this.
Sufficient codetermination even as a minority shareholder
If you are now worried that you do not have sufficient codetermination as a minority shareholder, let me tell you: You generally do not have to worry about an investor making strategic decisions over your head. No one knows your company as well as you do. They will give your advice and opinion a lot of weight. Even more weight than the mere percentage distribution of shares. In addition, all shareholders have an equal, intrinsic interest in developing the company positively.
We would be happy to support you in finding the strong partner at your side! Contact us today and let's talk about options.
Earn outs are purchase price components that are only paid out after the transaction on the basis of previously defined target figures (e.g. EBITDA or EBIT).
The topic of earn outs is once again gaining significant relevance in economically uncertain times, which have led to sometimes striking declines in profits due to supply chain problems, energy crises, inflation and war. From your point of view as a seller, such profit declines may only be a temporary problem, but the buyer is looking at it with its own eyes. With attractive purchase prices, they want you to show them that this is indeed only a temporary issue.
The earn out agreement initially reduces the purchase price paid at closing by the amount of the earn out. By definition, it is clear that you as the seller are generally not interested in such a purchase price component as this can give rise to the risk that part of the purchase price becomes worthless. Nevertheless, the earn out can also be seen as an opportunity, as the overall purchase price often reaches a higher level than with bidders who only pay a fixed purchase price. Especially if you believe in your own business plan or even its over-fulfillment, the earn out can be a very attractive scenario for you.
Earn outs require a very high level of negotiation skills. They are often only brought into negotiation by the buyer at a late stage of the transaction, on the one hand to cushion risks and on the other to be able to better finance the purchase price. After many months of the transaction process both sides, you as the seller, but also the buyers, have a high interest in the conclusion of the transaction but at the same time it is important to protect your own interests.
We will be happy to support you in negotiating the purchase price and in evaluating earn out components.
Taurus' resilient network and high level of industry expertise convinced me right from the start. The bidding process was therefore very structured and based on partnership. I always knew that me and my company were in good hands.
Dr. Ulrich Rass
Managing Partner, AVANTAG Energy Group, Luxembourg/Trier
Dr. Findeisen and his project team provided us with the best possible support throughout the entire sales process. I always had the feeling that Taurus was the right partner at my side and that together we could achieve an optimal purchase price.
Stephanie Viehhofer
Managing Partner, ALVI Group, Höxter
DEAL-DETAILS
The shareholders of IT Frankfurt GmbH sell 100% of their shares to Collaboration Betters The World S.A. Taurus organized the entire transaction process for the sellers, from the compilation of the sales documents to the search for and approach of buyers to the signing and closing.
acted as exclusive M&A advisor to the sellers
DEAL-DETAILS
The shareholders of ADOMUS Facility-Management GmbH sell 100% of their shares to STRABAG Property and Facility Services GmbH. Taurus organized the entire transaction process for the sellers, from the compilation of the sales documents to the search for and approach of buyers to the signing and closing.
acted as exclusive M&A advisor to the sellers
DEAL-DETAILS
The shareholders of ALBA Facility Solutions GmbH (AFS) & ALBA Property Management GmbH (APM) sell 100% of their shares to DUBAG Group.
acted as exclusive M&A-Advisor to the seller
