Accountants

We can support you in a number of different ways

Dealmaker Toolkit is designed to supplement the existing corporate finance skills and resources you already have. Although we tailor all our services, the type of support you can typically expect will depend on:

• Whether you offer any corporate finance services to your clients
• The breadth of corporate finance skills and experience you already have in-house
• Your staff resources at any given time
• The nature of your relationship with a specific client

We are fully flexible in how we work with all of our partners and always seek to work in a manner which ultimately delivers the best result for the client, makes the most of their existing relationship with you and most effectively combines our specialist skills with your own skills and experience.

Accountants without a specialist corporate finance team
Accountants with some corporate finance skills but without a dedicated team
Accountants with a specialist corporate finance team

Accountants without a specialist corporate finance team

If you don’t have the necessary skills and experience in-house then we can lead and manage the corporate transaction for your client as your outsourced corporate finance function.

In these cases we would usually expect to take the lead role in advising the client on the transaction and will engage directly with the client. However, as we don’t provide accountancy or tax services you’ll still remain involved with your client throughout the transaction while we provide the specialist deal skills.

Where we work as lead adviser on a transaction, which you have referred to us, we will pay you a referral fee in recognition of the important role you play in preparing the company for sale and ensuring a successful completion of the transaction.

Accountants with some corporate finance skills but without a dedicated team

Many partners in accountancy firms have some experience of corporate transactions and would be comfortable to advise a client through a management buyout, acquisition and possibly also a trade sale.

However, in our experience, general partners are often themselves busy with recurring client work and often do not have sufficient staff available to support on a transaction. These firms will almost certainly not have access to expensive mergers and acquisitions databases required to conduct full buyer research for a company disposal where a buyer has not been identified. In these circumstances we would be happy to either take a lead advisory role on a transaction, or to provide services from our Dealmaker Toolkit to enable the partner to act as the lead advisor.

We are aware that in certain client-partner relationships it would be inconceivable for a third party to lead on a corporate finance assignment, but that in other circumstances it would be more acceptable. We are happy to discuss your specific client circumstances and suggest an approach which best matches your skills and experience with our expertise in order to get the best outcome for the client.

Accountants with a specialist corporate finance team

We sometimes find that accountancy firms with a corporate finance team, do not always offer the full range of services their clients may require. For example, many corporate finance teams do not offer a full company disposal service involving in-depth research into potential UK and overseas buyers for a business.

This is usually because this service requires the use of expensive databases and many firms do not have a sufficient volume of transactions in their client base to justify these costs. The same databases are used for in-depth acquisition searches, and this is also a service which a corporate finance team within an accountancy firm may not offer.

Enhanced confidentiality

Even where accountants offer the full range of corporate finance services, including full and comprehensive buyer research, they sometimes prefer to use us at various stages in a transaction to help protect their client’s confidentiality, particularly at the stage of contacting prospective buyers.