Helping you realise your business growth ambitions

We help you grow or scale fast.

Whether you’re seeking organic business growth or looking to scale a business more aggressively through acquisitions or investment, our corporate finance experts can help.

We can support you in raising debt, identifying, appraising and delivering acquisitions or financial forecasting for scenario planning and improved visibility.

Who we work with

  • Business owners looking to enhance value
  • Business owners with an end goal in mind, such as succession or exit
  • Acquisitive corporates embarking on an acquisition strategy
  • Other professional advisors and intermediaries advising clients on similar projects

Where we can help

As experienced corporate finance advisors, we can provide all aspects of growth strategy such as financial modelling returns analysis and value enhancement through to corporate finance transactional advice on acquisitions. Our key specialisms are:

Debt advisory and fundraising

Using our extensive knowledge of the debt market, we can:

  • Approach and negotiate funding on your behalf
  • Compile ‘lender ready’ business plans and financial forecasts
  • Project manage all parties to successful completion of fundraising

Acquisition

Our corporate finance experts work with you to:

  • Appraise the key drivers for your acquisition strategy
  • Identify appropriate acquisition targets and approach them on your behalf
  • Draft and negotiate offers and deal structuring
  • Manage the due diligence process and conclusions
  • Project manage the deal team, including legal teams, funders, investors and vendors

Financial due diligence

Using our strong accountancy pedigree, we provide:

  • Assistance with appraising your own and target businesses
  • Core financial analysis to assist with diligence and decision-making processes

Valuation and value enhancement

We can work with you on longer-term growth and exit planning projects, including:

  • Options and returns appraisals – Giving a headline assessment of the value of your business now and what it could be in future if value gaps are addressed, as well as a summary of exit options

  • Value enhancement and business planning – Helping you identify potential value gaps in your business and giving you a roadmap to improve value to support future exit or succession events

Our approach to business growth projects

Ultimately, our role is to help our clients plan for and protect their future, supporting them to achieve their business and personal goals. By starting with these end goals in mind, we can take a longer-term approach to helping clients maximise future value.

This helps our clients ensure business plans and value expectations are understood and what changes to current business plans and strategies may be needed.

In summary, we can support you to:

  • Get the right advice on key strategic business decisions in support of business growth
  • Grow organically or through fundraising and acquisition to deliver your end goal requirements
  • Identify business targets and provide valuations of target businesses
  • Support you throughout key transactions such as raising finance or making an acquisition

Speak to one of our specialists

Dave Baggott

Partner

[email protected]

Frequently Asked Questions

A corporate finance advisor provides specialist support on strategic and transactional financial decisions such as raising finance, making acquisitions and enhancing business value. At CN Corporate Finance, our team of experts help business owners grow organically through focused strategic advisory, or scale more aggressively through acquisition or investment. We supporting everything from business planning and financial forecasting, through to debt advisory and acquisition support including sourcing and approaching targets, deal support and Due Diligence.

We provide the full range of growth-focused corporate finance services, including debt advisory and fundraising, acquisition advice, financial due diligence, business valuations and value enhancement planning. Whether you need help raising finance, identifying acquisition targets, delivering an acquisition or building a roadmap to increase the value of your business ahead of a future exit or succession event, our team can support you at every stage.

Yes. Our debt advisory and fundraising specialists use extensive knowledge of the debt market to approach and negotiate funding on your behalf. We compile “lender ready” business plans and financial forecasts, identify the most appropriate funding options for your growth plans, and project manage all parties through to the successful completion of your fundraising.

We manage the acquisition process from start to finish. Our corporate finance experts help you appraise the key drivers behind your acquisition strategy, identify and approach suitable acquisition targets, draft and negotiate offers, structure the deal, and deliver or manage financial due diligence. We also project manage the wider deal team to successful completion, which includes legal advisors, funders, investors and vendors.

Financial due diligence is the detailed review of a target company’s financial position before a transaction completes. It provides you with comfort that the target’s profits and assets are in line with information provided by the target at the offer stage. It also helps to provide insight for deal completion mechanics such as the Enterprise to Equity bridge and what a normalised level of working capital is for the target. Ultimately it provides additional comfort over maintainable profitability, identifies risks and informs deal structure and pricing.

Valuing a business can be a complex process and requires a detailed analysis of your business, operations, financials, industry and external market factors. Calculating the most appropriate basis of valuation can depend on many factors – some of the more common methods are market-based comparatives including multiples of maintainable profits, comparable transactions, levels of net assets in the business, and discounted cash flows based on future forecasts and expected cash flows.

Ultimately, the value of a business is agreed between a willing buyer and a willing seller. If you’d like to get a more accurate valuation of your business, or you are looking to assess whether an offer you have received is fair and appropriate, don’t hesitate to get in touch with CN Strategic Advisors to provide you with our experienced assessment and strategic advice.

Our options and returns appraisals are a good start to provide a headline assessment of current value, highlight the value gaps holding your business back, and summarise your potential exit options, giving you a clear baseline for growth and exit planning.

Value enhancement is the process of increasing the value of your business – typically ahead of a future sale, succession or investment event, but it will also help business owners to spend their time in the most efficient way. As part of our value enhancement workshops, we help you identify potential value gaps, such as over-reliance on key customers, poor sales visibility and forecasting or the owners being too involved in the day-to-day decisions, and provide a practical roadmap to address them, which in turn helps to drive value.

We work primarily with UK based owner-managed businesses and SMEs. This includes business owners looking to enhance value, owners with an end goal in mind such as succession or exit, acquisitive corporates embarking on a buy-and-build strategy, and other professional advisors and intermediaries supporting clients on similar projects.

This ultimately depends on your own risk profile, your end goals and timescales and the industry in which you operate. Organic growth builds value steadily with lower risk, while acquisition can accelerate scale, and develop new opportunities more quickly. We help you appraise both routes through financial modelling, returns analysis and scenario planning, so you can choose the growth strategy that best delivers your business and personal objectives.

The earlier the better. As part of our first meetings with you, we look to understand your end goals as this should then help dictate the growth strategy to ensure these goals are delivered. Early planning gives you time to address value gaps, strengthen financial performance and ensure your business plans and value expectations are aligned well before any transaction.