M&A Advisory
We represent private companies in the
transactions that define them.
Zaidwood advises privately held businesses on the sale of a company and on the acquisition of others. Most owners transact once. Every counterparty across the table transacts continuously. Our function is to close that distance.
We sit on both sides of the private capital markets.
The firm raises capital from the same sponsors, strategic acquirers and family offices that acquire businesses. That position is the source of our view on what a counterparty is mandated to underwrite, what causes them to discount, and what they will pay for - applied on behalf of whichever side of the transaction we represent.
What we do
Two mandates
Sell-side advisory
Representing the owner
We advise owners seeking full or partial liquidity. The mandate begins with a defensible view of value and the preparation required to sustain it under institutional diligence: quality of earnings, normalised financials, customer concentration and the operating record an acquirer will test. We then assemble the counterparty universe, run a competitive process, and manage diligence and negotiation through to signing.
Preparation establishes the range. Process determines where within it a transaction settles.
Buy-side advisory
Representing the acquirer
We advise companies and sponsors executing acquisitions. The mandate begins with an acquisition thesis and the criteria that follow from it, rather than from the assets that happen to be available. We originate against that thesis, including proprietary and off-market situations, evaluate and structure each opportunity, and manage diligence and negotiation through to close.
Acquisition financing is arranged alongside the mandate, through the firm’s capital raising practice, rather than referred out.
Coverage
Sectors
Each sector maps to professionals who have executed in it. Mandates outside them are accepted on the two criteria that follow.
Advanced Manufacturing
Energy
Digital Infrastructure
Medtech
Consumer
Enterprise Tech
Mandate criteria
Two questions, decide every mandate
Other criteria apply, and they vary with the mandate. These two are the principles. Sector coverage is not among them: we accept a mandate in any industry where both conditions hold, and we decline where either fails.
We can underwrite the cash flow
The earnings must be capable of being understood, normalised and defended: what the business actually produces, how durable it is, and what an acquirer will and will not credit. Where the cash flow cannot be underwritten, no process corrects it.
We can name the risks
Every business carries risks an acquirer will find. Our requirement is that we identify and articulate them first - concentration, dependency, structure, contract quality - and attach a value to each. A risk we have named is a negotiation. A risk discovered in diligence is a retrade.
Applied consistently, this is what allows the firm to accept mandates outside the sectors set out above. Those sectors describe where this team has executed. They do not describe the limit of what it can underwrite.
Our advantage
What the platform contributes
Four capabilities distinguish this practice in the lower middle market, and each of them is structural rather than stylistic. Behind them is a bench that has executed at a scale the lower middle market rarely has access to.
Position
Both sides of the table
We are in front of the same sponsors, strategic acquirers and family offices on capital raising mandates. We know what they are permitted to underwrite, at what size, and what causes them to decline - because we are told, continuously, on transactions that are not yours.
Standard
Underwriting discipline
The two criteria above are applied before a mandate is accepted, not after it is signed. Where either fails we say so and decline. Declining is what makes the mandates we do accept credible to the counterparties we bring them to.
Capability
Operating remediation
Where a business requires work before it requires a process, the firm’s Growth Advisory practice undertakes it. Few advisers in this market can remediate what they identify, and fewer identify it early enough for remediation to matter.
Reach
Capital markets access
Acquisition financing, minority recapitalisations and structured consideration are arranged through the firm’s Capital Raising practice. Transactions that require capital to complete are not dependent on a third party to supply it.
Who executes
The record behind the mandate
Track record
Public offerings, exits and acquisitions
The professionals who carry these mandates have completed more than 100 transactions across careers spanning three decades, on engagements involving ABB, IDX, Volvo Aero, Phillips 66, Kone and DuPont. One career record alone exceeds $15.2B in transaction value.
Sector depth
Technology, biopharma and private credit
Fifteen years of technology M&A across fintech, software and digital assets, on transactions involving IPREO and Fiserv, exceeding $2B in value with $700M of financing arranged. Alongside it, twenty years of biopharma and medical technology advisory across more than $500M in advised transaction value.
Where it was learned
Trained where the standard is set
JP Morgan, Lehman Brothers, Morningstar, Northern Trust, PNC and FFTW. The diligence standard applied to a lower middle market transaction here is the standard those institutions apply at many multiples of its size, and it does not scale down with the mandate.
Figures describe the career records of individual professionals, at Zaidwood or at prior institutions. They are career records rather than firm aggregates, and they are not summed. Full credentials available on request. Biographies on the About Us page.
Our approach
Principles we execute against
Preparation precedes process
Issues identified before launch are remediable. The same issues surfaced in confirmatory diligence are price adjustments. The majority of the work that determines outcome is completed before the first approach is made.
Competitive tension, held to the end
A process run in parallel creates competition. A process run sequentially becomes a queue, and the queue sets the terms.
Counterparties are screened, not broadcast
Breadth is not the objective. We approach counterparties permitted by their own mandate to transact at that size, in that structure and in that sector, under confidentiality throughout.
Terms beyond price
Offers are evaluated on consideration mix, rollover, earn-out, conditionality and certainty of funding, and on the obligations that survive closing.
These principles resolve into the firm’s eight-stage execution framework, common to every mandate and set out in full under Our Approach.