Growth, investment and transfer are all structuring projects for the development and durability of your company.
As part of our Finance Advisory solutions, we support you in these projects to help you make the right decisions in an increasingly complex economic and regulatory context.
We can rely on a network of multidisciplinary experts and highly-trained employees to fulfil our goal of being your prime advisor during these operations.
Merger & Acquisition
Our teams of specialists provide services in the following areas:
Due diligence for acquisition transactions on behalf of financial or industrial buyers
Our expertise is recognised by the main players in the investment capital sector including in transactions regarding innovative companies. Our goal is to provide you with support in order to:
- Secure the transaction, assess the risks and guarantees to be arranged
- Recommend means of optimising the price of the transaction
- Identify strategies for creating value and expediting the post-acquisition consolidation
Assistance with raising equity or with the sale
With the help of first ranking partners, we can provide you with full assistance in the process or raising equity in France and, leveraging on PKF International, the major financial markets. Accordingly, PKF Audit Conseil has guided several customers in their navigation of the Paris (Euronext), Frankfurt and London stock exchange market.
Contribution to financial negotiation
Combined with our partners (lawyers, chartered accountants, etc.), we draw on our expertise to provide you with sensible and valuable advice on how to make the right decisions in keeping with your interests.
Supporting managers in the decision-making process
We leverage on our expertise to provide you with assistance in areas that are not strictly related to the transactions and negotiations in order to best meet your strategic, financial and economic goals.
Business evaluation
The assessment of a company is an essential step in many structuring projects:
- Determination of the possible negotiation gap of the purchase or sale price of all or part of the capital
- Determination of a fair exit price for a minority shareholder
- Performance of impairment tests (IAS 36)
- Capital contribution and merger auditing services
There may be significant differences between the various valuation methods or between the estimated value of a company and the price at which it can actually be sold.
Given that no one holds a monopoly on truth when it comes to valuation, this action must be carried out with control and objectivity, and must be tailored to the context of the transaction and combined with a thorough analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of your company and its environment.
Within this context, our teams have broad experience in the valuation methods and will select the most appropriate one. Furthermore, they will provide you with an instructive report featuring a value range and highlighting the levers having an impact on the valuation.
LBO assistance
The transfer of a company involves key issues for the buyer as well as the seller (durability of the company, assessment of the company, optimisation of the sale income, financing the transaction, etc.).
Therefore, we can provide you with a multidisciplinary team (lawyers, wealth management advisors, chartered accountants) with the aim of giving you an overall perspective covering the following steps, among others:
1 - Business evaluation with a view to finding a winning compromise.
2 - Due diligence aimed at validating the financial and economic information.
3 - Legal and tax engineering: We help you to optimise the legal and tax structure by taking into account the overall economy of the transaction and we guide you in the negotiation and drafting of the key documents (letter of intent, seller’s warranty on assets and liabilities, shareholders’ agreement, etc.)
4 – Financing: We know the constraints and analysis methods of banking institutions. To this end, we are the prime advisors of our clients enabling them to optimise the financial structure and helping them obtain the necessary financial backing.
Preparation of a business plan
Preparing a business plan is an important aspect as it illustrates the strategy planned by Management and quantifies the prospects. In some situations (transfer or equity investment), it is used as a basis for discussions on valuation.
However, the role of our team is to make Management aware that no one holds a monopoly on truth and forecasts are often just that. As a result, this process should be demystified in order to maintain the focus on its genuine advantage.
Accordingly, we alert you to the fact that beyond the raw figures, a business plan is particularly useful as a self-disciplinary tool for the business planner who must strive to follow the set guidelines. The business plan must help you to identify the deviations and then implement actions and quickly respond to changes: it is a genuine risk management tool and involves much more than speculating on the future.
With this in mind, a business plan is only relevant if it provides overall consistency. This goal can be obtained through synthetic structuring of the key assumptions, impacts understood and shared by management, and smooth and consistent , calculations, as opposed to a “black box” approach. Using an industry-recognised software, our teams support you in the decision-making process and the establishment of the various forecasts (which will be easier to update over time).