Building your deal team

Jan 12, 2012 by Karen Anderson

Lawyers, consultants, accountants and numpties

A business acquisition requires support from many professionals, including but not limited to lawyers, accountants, consultants, tax experts, industry specialists and surveyors. One of the reasons business acquisitions fail in the private sector is due to a lack of expertise in deal teams. Our research also showed that smaller deals can cost more as a result of using the right advisers but at the wrong time.

Within the AB4G programme we have worked continuously to create a network of advisers with experience supporting sme (small and medium sized enterprises) deals in Scotland – deal savvy advisers. Of course we have an additional requirement to this, advisers on AB4G deals are expected to be sympathetic to the social enterprise business model. The network has been developed both through peer referral and on a deal by deal basis. Our Partner pages on the website and our LinkedIn group contain some of these advisers but the network is growing so rapidly that these lists cannot be comprehensive.

For me, as a South African discovering a new word – numpty - was only enhanced by the legal accuracy inferred upon it when I heard it first used by a lawyer to describe the kind of adviser one does not want on your deal team. The polite numpty flag is when a trusted adviser says: “I would not usually expect x to be part of this kind of deal.” Scotland is small and the deal savvy professionals tend to know each other.

Part of our offering in the programme is to try and help both parties to have good deal teams by introducing deal savvy professionals when requested. We usually do this by arranging beauty parade sessions at a neutral venue. However the choice of advisers is ultimately yours and key to preventing numpties joining your team is don’t be a numpty yourself . Here are 2 ways you could fall into this trap:

1. By asking the ‘wrong’ questions of an adviser and as a result you get the wrong advice; or

2. By asking the ‘right’ questions of the wrong professional, e.g

• expecting comprehensive deal tax advice from your auditor or,
• asking a property expert for legal structures guidance.

You can reduce the risk of these errors by asking lots of questions before building your teamusing resources in the AB4G programme, networking to meet relevantly experienced advisers,  and through attending our Getting ready to buy seminar, next date February 9th, Glasgow (click here to register).

DISCLAIMER

The views and opinions expressed in the blogs are independent and do not constitute endorsed advice or necessarily reflect the views or position of Social Firms Scotland or the Acquiring Business for Good Programme.