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Guides

Guides

Longer pieces, written for someone actually buying a business rather than for a search engine. Every figure about the lending market carries a named, dated source you can open, and where we could not source something we left it out rather than rounding it up.

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The list

Every guide

Guide Asset-based lending, and how a borrowing base is built A facility sized on what the balance sheet holds rather than on a multiple of profit. How the borrowing base is built, and what quietly shrinks it.
Guide Buying a block of fees What actually transfers in a fee block deal, how the schedule is tested, and why a lender treats it...
Guide Clawback and fee retention How a clawback clause is actually built, what makes it enforceable, and why a lender reads it before it reads...
Guide Commercial mortgages, and what happens when the target owns its premises Long-term lending on a building, and the questions it forces about the deal around it. Valuation, tenure, VAT...
Guide Contract retentions and work in progress Why these two balance sheet items decide the price, how to value them honestly, and how a lender treats them.
Guide Deferred consideration and earn-outs, and how they are measured Part of the price paid later. The measurement, the protection and the drafting decisions that produce the...
Guide Defining what you are actually buying, and why The brief comes before the search. What it has to answer, and why a lender reads the same document.
Guide Due diligence, and keeping the funding intact while you do it Verifying what you have been told, in four streams, without losing the lender you already have.
Guide Equity contribution, where it comes from and what counts The money that sits underneath the debt. Where buyers find it, which forms a lender counts, and what has to...
Guide Funding a practice purchase How the money is put together for a practice purchase, how the deferred consideration ranks, and the cash...
Guide Government-backed lending, and what the guarantee does not do The guarantee protects the lender, not the borrower. What that changes about a decision, and the eligibility...
Guide How lenders assess recurring revenue What separates revenue that renews from revenue a lender will lend against, and the five tests that decide it.
Guide How lending criteria have changed since 2020 What the published evidence shows about SME lending since 2020, what it does not show, and which changes...
Guide MBO, MBI and BIMBO explained, and how each one funds Who is buying decides how the deal funds. The three management structures, and what a lender is really...
Guide Monitoring contracts and recurring income Where the margin in a monitoring base really sits, what can take it away, and how the income should be...
Guide Personal guarantees explained What a guarantee commits you to, what caps and insurance really do, and what to ask before signing.
Guide Route density and contract value How to measure density from a schedule, why frequency matters more than value, and why the same round is...
Guide Senior term debt, and what an acquisition lender is really lending against The main loan in most acquisitions. What secures it, how it is priced and repaid, and the profit rebuild that...
Guide Share purchase versus asset purchase, and why your lender cares Two ways to buy the same business. What each one transfers, and what it changes about the money.
Guide Stacking facilities, ranking and the intercreditor problem Why deals use several facilities at once, how they rank against each other, and the conflicts that stop a...
Guide Succession and retirement sales, and the dependency problem The most common acquisition in these sectors, and the one where the seller is the biggest single risk in the...
Guide TUPE and contract novation How employees come with the work, which liabilities travel with them, and why FM contracts resist being moved.
Guide The first hundred days, and the covenants nobody mentioned The period where the price gets justified or does not. Retention, cash and the reporting your lender is...
Guide Valuation basics, and the number a lender actually uses Price is negotiated on one number and debt is serviced from another. What the second number is, and how it is...
Guide Vendor finance, ranking and subordination in an acquisition Where the seller's money sits in the queue, and the drafting that decides whether your lender counts it for...
Guide What carries value in an HVAC business The value drivers underneath the maintenance book, and the ones that quietly destroy value instead.
Guide What lenders look for in a business acquisition What is actually in the credit paper, in the order it gets weighed, and what really decides the answer.
Guide Why lenders decline acquisition finance The reasons deals actually get declined, ordered by how often they are the real reason, and which are fixable.

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