WindLake professionals have extensive experience representing clients in successful M&A transactions. By focusing on the unique attributes of each client’s business, and limiting our marketing efforts to a highly-focused and motivated set of strategic and financial acquirors, our professionals have successfully helped clients monetize over $1 billion in completed sale mandates. WindLake’s comprehensive M&A advisory services will help you explore, step-by-step, each of the many alternatives available to you, including:
- 100% Sale
- Partial Sale, or Recapitalization
- Minority Interest Growth Capital
- Management or Shareholder Buyout
- Strategic Acquisition
Choosing the Right Advisor. When it comes to M&A, it is imperative to choose an advisor that is skilled and experienced in managing the entire deal process. In the final analysis, it’s about maximizing your investment – whether you are looking to acquire a firm, or divest one. A quality advisor should be able to utilize his or her professional talent and market knowledge to deliver incremental value to a transaction. This incremental contribution should result in monetized value to the client several times the success fee charged.
Our approach to M&A is different from many advisors. We do not subscribe to the common practice of disseminating sensitive personal and corporate data to a wide audience of potential acquirors, merely hoping that a few might express interest. These strategies, unfortunately, are used by many advisors due to lack of time, interest, knowledge, professionalism, and a desire to do what is in the client’s best interest. Instead, we focus on the key value drivers of your business and then contact only those acquirors that would benefit most from doing the deal. We then tailor our presentation to appeal to each specific acquiror, explaining to each how they will benefit from completing the transaction. By adhering to this discipline, we establish the foundation for a competitive auction and a premium M&A value for our client.
Knowing the Deal. At WindLake we believe that doing your homework, in advance, is critical to a successful outcome. To provide outstanding client service, it is absolutely imperative to ‘know the deal,’ – all of its strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and challenges, and most importantly, why both buyer and seller will benefit from doing the transaction. Yes, it does require us to invest more time and expense in the early stages, before even one acquirer or target company learns of our interest. However, with this investment we eventually reap the knowledge, confidence and focus required to achieve a value driven transaction, on time, and within budget. This is how great deals get completed.
Orchestrating Your Deal Team. At WindLake, we actively build a deal team that incorporates your current advisors as key deal team members. Most advisors, especially your existing accountants, attorneys and consultants, have much to offer and often can contribute great value as deal team members. We believe strongly in their involvement and make them key players in the deal. In these situations, it is often most rewarding for your company to engage an M&A expert to lead the deal team in partnership with management and other trusted advisors. More often than not, you will find that this strategy leads to superior results. In addition, many of your trusted advisors will feel this to be the ‘best of both worlds’ – they are quietly relieved of having to bear the burden of taking the lead in a project where they lack specialized M&A knowledge and experience, but at the same time, are able to play an active, valuable role in the transaction. It is for this same reason attorneys and accountants engage our services to assist them directly in transactions with their clients.
By analogy, we view a deal team to be similar to a first-rate professional basketball team. All players play an important role in the team’s success. A center is no more valuable than a guard. A guard is no more valuable than a forward. As a team, they can win many games in superior fashion by getting the most out of each player. However, it is when the point guard tries to play center, and the center tries to play point guard, that the problems begin. Don’t let this happen to your transaction. We embrace your trusted advisors as valuable professionals and critical deal team members, and we work closely with them to maximize value for you, the client.
Seeking Advice. Whether you use WindLake or another quality advisor, we encourage you to capitalize on the value of competent professional representation. Given that success fees are paid only upon the completion of a successful transaction, there is little reason to enter the M&A race alone. Rest assured, the other side will have a team of advisors. You should too.
To obtain more information, or to schedule a complimentary consultation with one of our advisors, please contact us via email at mergers@windlakeadvisors.com. We will respond to your inquiry promptly.
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