Our Strategy · How we work

From first conversation to completion, in six stages.

The Group’s process is short because its criteria are clear. Each stage below has a purpose, a timetable, and an undertaking from the Group, and none of them changes once the letter of intent is signed.

1ConversationWithin ten days2InformationAs supplied3Letter of intentTen working days4DiligenceSixty days5AgreementNegotiated once6CompletionDay one
  1. 1. Conversation (Within ten days) A confidential conversation between the owner and a principal.
  2. 2. Information (As supplied) A confidentiality agreement; three years of accounts, management information, and cohort data.
  3. 3. Letter of intent (Ten working days) Price, structure, and timetable in writing; the terms do not move afterwards.
  4. 4. Diligence (Sixty days) Quality of earnings, legal, tax, cyber, and background checks, under exclusivity.
  5. 5. Agreement (Negotiated once) Warranties, a locked-box price, a retention, and restrictive covenants.
  6. 6. Completion (Day one) Cash at completion; treasury control; the first hundred days begin the same morning.

From the first conversation to completion in six stages, each with a timetable and an undertaking from the Group. Touch a stage to see what happens in it.

  1. 1

    Conversation

    A confidential conversation between the owner and a principal of the Group: what the business does, what it earns, and why it might be sold.

    Timetable: within ten days of first contact.
    Undertaking: Nobody outside the Group learns of it.

  2. 2

    Confidentiality and information

    A confidentiality agreement, then three years of accounts, current management information, and the cohort and channel data. Two questions decide the rest: who owns the demand, and what the cohorts say.

    Timetable: as the owner supplies it.
    Undertaking: The Group asks only for what it will use.

  3. 3

    The letter of intent

    Price, structure, exclusivity, and timetable, in writing, on the Group’s terms.

    Timetable: within ten working days of access to the data room; five to seven business days to reply.
    Undertaking: The terms are the Group’s real terms, and they do not move afterwards except for a matter the diligence uncovers.

  4. 4

    Exclusivity and confirmatory diligence

    Quality of earnings by an accountancy firm of standing; legal, tax, and employment by counsel in the business’s jurisdiction; cyber, data, and payment-security review; background checks.

    Timetable: sixty days, with one extension of thirty.
    Undertaking: The Group pays for its own diligence and shares its findings with the owner.

  5. 5

    Agreement

    A sale agreement with a full warranty and tax-covenant package, a locked-box price with a leakage covenant, a retention or escrow, and restrictive covenants; where a founder rolls a stake, a shareholders’ agreement with reserved matters.

    Undertaking: Documents from counsel of standing, negotiated once.

  6. 6

    Completion

    Cash at completion, the vendor loan note or deferred consideration issued, treasury control from the first day.

    Undertaking: The first hundred days begin the same morning.

Two principals of the Group in a private dining room, London.

Control, then continuity, then the plan.

Days one to ten: bank mandates and treasury; a freeze on supplier and agency contracts; an all-hands within forty-eight hours; the day-ten flash report. Days eleven to thirty: completion accounts; second-line management confirmed with retention agreements; the monthly pack on the Group template; compliance verified. Days thirty-one to sixty: supplier terms reviewed; the founder’s transition plan agreed; finance migrated to the Group system; the first cross-portfolio buying. Days sixty-one to one hundred: the value-creation plan locked; the day-100 report to the Board and, where there is one, the lender.

What each stage asks of you.

Candour in the first conversation; evidence in the second; a decision by the response date in the third; access and patience in the fourth; and, at completion, the willingness to stay for the period agreed and to see the business become part of something larger.

Contact

Every enquiry is read by a principal.

Whether you own a business, act for one, or finance them, the conversation begins in confidence and continues in writing. The Group replies within two working days.

Begin a conversationWrite to info@xyragroup.com