Mandate 01 · Buy-side
Acquisition
Coverage of a named universe of owners, held from well before a decision to sell and worked in the firm's own name.
The position
Between $10m and $300m of enterprise value, companies are held in the main by the person who built them, the family that inherited them, or a sponsor holding past its intended term. A small share of that population is in a process at any moment. The rest are reachable and not for sale.
An owner who is not for sale today is frequently eighteen to thirty-six months from being for sale, and the trigger sits outside the business. Those events are invisible from a screen and obvious in a conversation held before they happen.
How it runs
The thesis is defined with the firm: sub-sector, size, geography, and the shape of a business that fits. We build the named universe against it and work the whole of it, continuously, rather than the part that happens to be in market.
Contact is made in the firm's name and at a level the owner will take a second meeting at. Coverage is maintained through the years when there is nothing to transact, which is the part of this work that does not survive being run in-house against a deployment clock.
What it holds
A standing position with owners who have not decided anything yet, and transactions that arrive before a bank is appointed. Entry price is set in conversation rather than in a range letter, and it is the term with the most leverage over the return.
The mandate is exclusive. We hold one firm per thesis for as long as it runs.