M&A & IPO Advisory
You built the business. Now you are deciding what to do with it. We have been on both sides of that decision.
Selling a business is not a financial event. It is one of the most complex decisions a family makes, with implications across tax, succession, governance, and what the next generation inherits: assets, or something more complicated.
An IPO compounds the complexity. More scrutiny, more permanence, more preparation required, and a public disclosure process that does not pause while the family figures out what it wants.
We do not replace your investment bank or your lawyers. We sit alongside you with an operating perspective they do not have, and we make sure the decisions being made actually serve the family, not just the transaction.
Across the full lifecycle, not just the moment of signing.
Pre-transaction
This is where the most important work happens, and it is where most families are least prepared.
We start with a readiness assessment: Is the business ready? Is the structure clean? Is the family governance in place for a decision of this size? These questions sound straightforward. The answers rarely are.
We also work to align objectives across the family before the process begins. What does each stakeholder actually want? Liquidity, continuity, control retention, legacy, a combination? Misalignment inside the family during a sale or listing creates leverage for the other side of the table. Getting this resolved early is not a soft exercise. It is commercial preparation.
Once advisors are selected, we help brief them with the family's real objectives rather than the ones that are easiest to communicate.
During transaction
We act as a thought partner through negotiation. We translate what advisors are recommending and help the family stress-test it against what was agreed before the process started.
We review deal terms and structure with an operator's perspective: what the numbers say and what they do not. We have been inside transactions from the operating side. We know where the risk is transferred through language rather than disclosed.
We also keep succession and estate planning aligned with transaction outcomes in real time. These two workstreams are routinely handled in isolation. They should not be.
Post-transaction
Liquidity creates its own set of decisions. We work with families on capital redeployment planning for proceeds, governance adjustment for the structure that exists after the event, and integration of the transaction outcome into the broader Family Office mandate.
The transaction closes. The work does not.
Going public changes the family's relationship with information. Permanently.
An IPO is not a larger version of a private sale. The disclosure requirements, the lock-up structures, the ongoing governance obligations, and the family dynamics around a public entity are all different categories of challenge.
We work with families preparing for a listing on three things: governance readiness for the board and public reporting obligations, family cohesion around what the IPO means for control and succession, and alignment with the investment bank on narrative versus the actual operating reality of the business.
We do not run the listing. We make sure the family is prepared for what comes after it.
This is the right conversation when:
- You have a family business and a transaction is being considered, whether buyer-led or owner-initiated
- You have received an unsolicited offer and need an independent perspective before engaging
- A listing is being planned and the family governance is not yet ready for the scrutiny that follows
- The transaction advisors are aligned on deal terms but no one is focused on what the family actually wants out of it