Our Services

A scenic harbor view from a high vantage point with boats docked along the piers, surrounded by hills with some snow, and a house on a hillside in the foreground, with the sun setting or rising in the background.

  • After years of fielding cold-calls from buyers, you find you can ignore the call of greener pastures no longer! When you're ready to hand over the reins of your business to a new owner, our team has the tools, processes, skills and experience to guide you through every step of the process.

    Before we even begin an engagement, we spend time with the current owners to carefully understand not only the business, its value factors, and the potential types of buyers, but also the personal, family and legacy objectives and expectations of the sellers. We invest significant time upfront to ensure our approach is a strong fit for you and your business, and that we are aligned with your goals before you receive our commitment to support you through a sales process.

    While no two processes are exactly the same, a typical sell-side M&A engagement includes the following steps:

    • Prepare business valuation schedules and supporting financial analysis to support the purchase price objective; we will then review these schedules with you.

    • Perform “self due-diligence” procedures, so that we can identify and plan for any issues that might arise during the process.

    • Consult with tax specialists (either yours or one of our trusted advisors) to optimize your after-tax proceeds.

    • Work with owners to identify an ideal buyer profile; build a sales process that targets that ideal buyer type with the objective of creating competitive tension amongst a shortlist of qualified acquirers.

    • Provide these potential purchasers with a 2-page, non-identifying “Summary of Opportunity”, advise them that we will be conducting a business sale process involving a select group of purchasers, explain to them our process, and invite them to participate.

    • Draft a Mutual Non-Disclosure Agreement (MNDA) that protects your confidential information, and have it signed by each party that chooses to participate.

    • Draft a Confidential Information Memorandum (CIM) – essentially a brochure on your businesses – for approval by you, and then distribution to the selected potential purchasers.

    • Obtain expressions of interest from potential purchasers, with a deadline of a few weeks from when they receive the CIM.

    • Negotiate with each potential purchaser to enhance their expression of interest, where possible.

    • Analyze and compare all offers received and support you in choosing the optimal purchaser.

    • Negotiate a Letter of Intent with the selected purchaser.

    • Coordinate information required for due diligence by selected purchaser by collecting and posting the documents in a secure, protected and monitored virtual data room.

    • Coordinate with legal counsel to enable review and negotiation of purchase agreement and related documents.

    • Other activities as required to achieve a successful closing.

    • Any post-closing assistance required, such as finalizing working capital adjustment, any earnout calculations, supporting post-transaction integration, etc.

    Based on our experience, this process is most effective for businesses with $500,000 to $3 million of earnings.

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  • You've spent years building your business, but the journey isn't over yet. Who better to pass the torch to than the team alongside you! For owners looking to not only preserve the legacy of their business, but retain, motivate, and reward their key people, an internal ownership transition is an option that can be tailored to meet the objectives of both the vendors and incoming owners.

    Through our three-phased approach, our VEER team works closely with both the current owners and the potential buyer(s) to understand objectives (business, family and personal), business operations and strategic vision to customize an equity transition plan unique to your business. And while structuring a transaction may technically document the transition, we understand that there are other elements required to give the new owners winning conditions.

    We spend time focusing on understanding the required transition of roles and responsibilities after the transaction, identifying key elements for a shareholders’ agreement and establishing a baseline of financial literacy for new owners. Having completed dozens of internal ownership transitions, we know we're only limited by our creativity in formulating a customized ownership transition for your business!

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  • Businesses throughout the world have proven over and over again the benefits of employee ownership. Employee-owned businesses have shown to be more profitable, more resilient to adversity, and more attractive choices to high performing employees, enabling the retention of key talent and fostering a culture of ownership thinking. Introducing an ESOP or employee equity plan can be a strategy to engage your employees in the growth and success of your business, and can be a step in the ownership transition to the next generation.

    VEER will help you assess the viability of an ESOP within your organization. We collaboratively design the right structure and communication plan with your management team and employee group to make this unique ownership structure a success.

    We help manage the entire ESOP transaction process, beginning with a preliminary evaluation of its feasibility and some alternative courses of action. We estimate the value of your business and develop an implementation plan that will be transparent to shareholders and employees, and simple to maintain in the future.

    While designing and implementing the plan, we create a structure that is right for you, your team and your business. Based on your objectives and timeline, we help you determine important factors like:

    • The type and amount of equity to offer

    • The conditions for purchasing and selling of shares

    • How transactions will be financed

    • Exit conditions and repurchase obligations

    We collaborate on a communications plan for the new shareholders and the employee group at-large to improve buy-in and aid their transition to an ownership mindset. We liaise with finance professionals for any funding needs, tax specialists for both personal and corporate considerations, and legal professionals to create comprehensive agreements and shareholder documentation.

    After successfully implementing your ESOP, we can assist with monitoring the plan’s repurchase obligations and related financing needs, identifying an administrator to maintain the plan, as well as communicating with shareholders and employees to keep them informed.

An airplane on a runway with cloudy skies and mountains in the background.

  • You might not be ready to sell your business yet, and just thinking about it can be intimidating and overwhelming. A million questions come to mind when contemplating a potential sale. Who will buy it? How will our customers and employees react? What is it worth? Who can replace me in the business? What will I do every day if I am not working?

    We start by learning about your objectives – they get the process started in the right direction and we can revisit them (our “north star”) every step of the way. We then look at the business from a purchaser’s perspective to identify those value factors most relevant for your specific business and industry, and we recommend specific, measurable actions you can take to enhance the value and sellability of your business prior to exit.

Buying A Business?

While we work exclusively for business owners on sell-side engagements, we are always looking to work with qualified buyers and find a great fit for our clients. Leave us your contact information and investment criteria so we can get in touch when the right opportunity comes to market.

Contact Form for Buyers