Hello everyone, I work for Dunham Massey Investment Group (https://www.dmig.co.uk/) around 120m in revenue, I source and advise deals around the 10m-75m region, the reason for this message is that I’m slowly starting to set up a firm that I’ll begin properly around the end of this year named Whirlow House Partners I’ll attach the website. (https://whirlowhousepartners.com/) It’s not finished yet but gives an idea the angle I’m aiming at, buying smaller companies around the 1m-25m mark and I’m starting to look for a team to launch with. I’m aiming at the hard FM and building services sector, if you’d like to know more feel free to message me, even if it’s unrelated I’d like to make some connections 👍 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabrielkayani?utm_source=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=member_ios

Turning a Competitor’s Failure into 50% Revenue Growth: A Distressed Deal Case Study Distressed Acquisition We Advised On We don’t usually do these but thought I’d share the case study. We don’t normally touch them because they are messy, time compressed, legally constrained, light on diligence, heavy on execution risk, and emotionally draining for everyone involved. Most buyers underestimate the cash required, overestimate how quickly synergies arrive, and forget that in an insolvency process you are buying problems, not just assets. That said, we recently advised on a distressed situation where the strategic logic was unusually compelling — and where the downside was well understood and actively managed. This article outlines why the deal made sense, and then walks through a live deal analysis, covering the real world considerations buyers need to think about when acquiring a business out of administration. The strategic backdrop A year ago, we helped a JV partner acquire a profitable construction business: • £11m turnover • £1.1m EBITDA • Well-run, scalable, and operationally disciplined Recently, a direct competitor — operating in the same region, with overlapping customers, assets, and workforce — moved toward administration. From the outside, the distressed business looked unattractive: • Loss making • Overstaffed head office • Factored receivables • Asset heavy • Operationally fragmented across multiple sites But from the perspective of an experienced operator already in the sector, it represented something else: An opportunity to add almost 50% to turnover, improve margins through scale and consolidation, and acquire hard assets at a fraction of replacement value. This wasn’t a financial engineering play. It was a strategic bolt on rescue, driven by operational synergies. The core investment thesis The buyer’s logic was straightforward: • Revenue upside • Retain core customers • Cross sell into an existing client base • Renew live contracts • Margin improvement

Hello Paul, I'm planning on starting my M&A career in my own right towards the end of the year I'm just in the early stages of setting up the website, phones, emails etc... I'm wanting to include a advisory board on the website to build credibility, do you have any suggestions on how to approach people with this idea? Thanks in advance.

That’s the value of four term sheets issued in the last two weeks for four deals - four different industries, a US deal, Ireland, UK and Australia. Two accepted with due diligence now under way. Two in negotiations . Term sheets are a great way to capture the core components of a deal and something that can be referred back to in the event of any disagreements later down the line. We generally present them after a formal presentation is gone through with the seller(s) that doesn’t just go through the financial and legal components of the deal but sells us a buyer (track record, future plans for the company etc). It’s a simple 4/5 page document - If anyone is interested in having a copy of the template we use like this post or comment and I’ll send it to you.

Hello Paul, I know you say to be looking for deals of a certain size, however I have a few UK based deals that are small from around 50k-250k ebit, 500k revenue to around 2 million revenue just wondered if there is lending available for deals in this range in the UK and if you could tell me about the best options. Some have a good tangible asset base and some not so much. Thanks in advance.