Cordis represents owners of founder-led and family companies through the sale of the business. Most of the work happens before the market hears your name, so diligence is answered from a file that already exists.
Your side of the table
The people across the table arrive with a model, a playbook and counsel who does nothing else. They will read your company through three years of statements and a data room, and their price will rest on what those documents can prove.
Decades of work deserve the same discipline on your side. Cordis prepares the company the way a buyer will test it, runs a competitive process under the Cordis name, and stays through closing and the first quarter that follows.
Each stage ends in a decision that belongs to you.
Why preparation comes first
of lower middle market transactions in the Working Paper 001 dataset include at least one price adjustment after the letter of intent1
of enterprise value: the average size of those adjustments1
The Preparation Gap
Cordis research calls the value lost between a signed letter of intent and closing the Preparation Gap. Most of it traces to what a buyer finds in diligence that the seller could have organized, explained or fixed in advance.
The remedy is time, spent before the process begins. That is why the first stage of every mandate is the longest, and why it happens entirely out of view.
The four stages
A full process usually runs nine to twelve months from the start of preparation to closing.
What a buyer will test
A buyer's accountant and lender will look at all of them. The only question is whether the answers are ready.
Whether reported profit survives an independent review. Answered with add-backs documented by category and by year.
How much rides on the largest accounts. Answered with contracts, history and, where possible, real diversification documented over time.
Whether the business runs without you. Answered with a second tier of decision-makers whose authority is written down.
What the buyer expects to be left in the business at closing. Answered with a monthly history that supports a fair level before it is negotiated.
Whether the numbers can be tested month by month. Answered with accrual statements and a monthly close.
Whether permits, leases and key agreements transfer with the company. Answered by finding anything held personally by the founder, early.
Who buys
The same company can draw very different offers depending on who is reading it. Choosing the buyer is a decision, best made before the market hears your name.
Joins your company to a platform it already owns. Pays for what it can absorb, within limits its lenders set.
The company a sponsor builds around. Looks for management depth, sound systems, and a business that runs without its founder.
An operating company in or near your market. Pays for customers, people and territory, and for the savings it can realistically capture.
A listed acquirer adding scale or a new line. Values audit-ready numbers and a business that fits its reporting.
Patient capital with a long hold. Values steady earnings and a team that stays, and often keeps the name on the building.
An individual who will run the company, often with bank financing. Reads earnings by lender rules and values the time you give to the transition.
How the work differs
Each line on the right is a commitment made in writing before a mandate begins.
How fees work
A sell-side engagement carries a work fee for the preparation and a success fee for the outcome. Both are quoted in writing before any work starts, and any expense you have not approved is ours.
How the two fees relate is set out in the written quote, so the fee conversation is finished before the hard choices arrive.
Cordis does not take success-only mandates. Because the preparation is paid for either way, we can tell you when the right answer is to wait.
Confidentiality
Preparation happens entirely out of view. When outreach begins, you decide which buyers see the company and when any of them learns its name.
Information is released in tiers from a watermarked data room, so each buyer sees only what its stage of the process requires. Your employees, customers, lenders and competitors hear nothing from us without your say-so.
Related
Questions
A full process usually runs nine to twelve months from the start of preparation to closing. A company prepared in advance moves through diligence faster, because the answers already exist.
Earlier gives you more options. Two to three years ahead lets you change what a buyer will see. A few months ahead still lets you know what a buyer will find before they find it.
Preparation happens out of view, approaches go out under the Cordis name, and you decide when any buyer learns who you are. Your employees meet a buyer only with your approval, and normally only after a letter of intent is signed.
A work fee for the preparation and a success fee for the outcome, both quoted in writing before work begins. Cordis does not take success-only mandates.
Yes. It sits in the preparation stage of every sell-side mandate.
Yes. Because the preparation is paid for either way, nothing in our structure pushes you toward an early closing. If waiting would serve you better, we will say so.
No. We take a mandate only where our work can add something material. If it cannot, we say so and point you to someone better suited.
No. Cordis represents one side of a transaction, and discloses any overlap in writing to both.
Sources
A first conversation is confidential, at no cost, and requires no engagement and no NDA. A senior member of the firm replies within one business day.
A written read of how a buyer will see your company.