Business Valuations
A defensible number for a sale, a share transfer, a divorce, a share scheme or simply to know where you stand, plus the levers that would move it.
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Corporate finance
Raising Finance
Lenders decline good businesses every week, usually because of how the case was presented rather than the business behind it. Preparing that case properly is ordinary accountancy work, and it changes outcomes.
The problem is usually the pack, not the business
Most owner-managed businesses approach a lender with last year's accounts and a conversation. Lenders make decisions on forward-looking information: can this business service this debt, under what assumptions, with what margin for error.
A proper funding case answers that question before it is asked:
- Integrated forecasts: profit and loss, balance sheet and cash flow that connect to each other, so the numbers move together when an assumption changes
- Stated assumptions, so a lender can test them rather than guess at them
- Serviceability and covenant headroom modelled explicitly, including a downside case
- A clear use of funds and repayment story
- Clean historic figures that reconcile to the filed accounts
What the money is for changes what you need
- Working capital, whether to fund growth or to steady the ship through a rough patch: usually invoice finance or an overdraft, and often a sign that the real issue is credit control rather than funding
- Asset purchases: hire purchase or leasing, where the tax treatment and capital allowances matter as much as the rate
- Property: commercial mortgages, with a much longer horizon and different covenant tests
- Acquisitions: see buying a business, where funding and deal structure have to be designed together
- Investment for equity: a different proposition entirely, since you are selling part of the business rather than borrowing against it
An honest view on whether to borrow at all
Not every plan should be debt funded, and part of what you are paying us for is someone with no commission at stake saying so. We have no relationship with any lender, we do not receive introducer fees, and we are not incentivised to see a facility completed.
Sometimes the right answer is a smaller facility, or fixing the working capital cycle first, or waiting two quarters until the figures support a better rate.
Ongoing, not one-off
Once the model exists it is worth keeping current. Clients on management accounts get a rolling forecast that stays useful long after the funding is drawn: it is how you see a covenant problem coming a quarter ahead instead of discovering it at the year end.
Talk to us about funding before you approach a lender, and the conversation with them tends to be much shorter.
Common questions
Do you arrange the finance for me?
No, and we are careful about that distinction. We prepare and present the financial case, model what the business can afford, and work alongside your bank or commercial finance broker. Arranging or recommending finance products is a different, regulated activity. What we bring is the numbers a lender trusts and an honest view of whether the borrowing is sensible.
What does a lender actually want to see?
Historic accounts that reconcile, an integrated forecast covering profit, balance sheet and cash flow, sensible and stated assumptions, clear headroom on serviceability, and an explanation of what the money is for and how it gets repaid. Applications fail far more often on presentation and on unexplained assumptions than on the underlying trading.
How much can my business borrow?
Less a matter of what you want than of what the cash flow can service through a bad quarter. We model it under a realistic case and a downside case, and if the answer is that the borrowing would be uncomfortable, we will say so. Debt taken on optimistic forecasts is one of the more reliable ways to damage a healthy business.
What about grants and other funding?
Worth checking, particularly for capital investment, innovation and job creation, though grant funding is patchy and application-heavy. We will point you at what is likely to be relevant and help with the financial sections of an application.
More corporate finance
Selling Your Business
The tax structuring, preparation and deal support behind a sale, so the amount that reaches your bank account is as close as possible to the number you agreed.
Learn more →Exit & Succession Planning
The two to five years before you leave, used properly: reliefs protected, the business made saleable, and a plan for who takes it on.
Learn more →Buying a Business
Financial due diligence, affordability modelling and deal structuring, so you find out what you are actually buying before you sign.
Learn more →Management Buyouts
Selling to the people who already run it: structuring a deal the management team can afford and the outgoing owner is happy to accept.
Learn more →
What this service is. Tax and accounting work connected with
a transaction: valuations, tax computations and structuring, financial
modelling, due diligence reporting, preparing your records and figures, and
working alongside your solicitor and other advisers. Tax treatment depends on
your circumstances and can change.
What it is not. We do not advise on the merits of buying or
selling shares or other investments, and we do not arrange or broker
investments or finance. Where you need that, we will tell you and you should
take advice from a firm authorised or licensed to give it.