Finding an international buyer for your business
In the past few months, we have concluded a number of M&A deals with overseas buyers – and we are continuing to receive interest from international buyers for a number of our UK based clients’ businesses which we are marketing for sale.
Recent deals include:
- The sale of a £2m Commercial Cleaning Company to an Italian facilities management group looking to build their activity in the UK. The deal completed within 2 months of our approaching the market. Click here to read the Case Study.
- The sale of a £676k provider of business management, transport management and telematics software and hardware products to the haulage and distribution industry. This company was acquired by an individual investor from Dubai. Click here for details of the company.
- The sale of a AU$ 1.1m IT software provider specialising in Laboratory Information Management Systems based on South East Australia. The business was acquired by trade buyer based in the same road in Australia! Click here for details of the company.
With the globalisation of many industry sectors, the activity in international M&A is growing. Whilst much of this is between large scale corporations, we are seeing that there is a growing demand for smaller UK companies from around the world. Therefore the market for buyers of your business, whether based in the UK or elsewhere, is expanding internationally, as mid-sized companies seek to establish a global presence.
Hornblower is certainly forging a reputation as an international brokerage. What this means for sellers of businesses in the UK, is direct exposure to international buyers, leading to increased competition and higher deal values.
Our Australian clients came to Hornblower due to our London base and international reach and we approached potential buyers in the UK, mainland Europe, US and Canada, as well as in Australia. This resulted in an extremely good level of enquiry with a number of good offers for our client to choose from. In the end, the buyer with the best offer, both in terms of value and future for the retiring owner’s staff, was another Australian company, but it was certainly worthwhile opening up the market internationally. Having left no stone unturned, we and our clients were confident of having achieved optimum value.