Not all growth is organic. There are times when growth by acquisition will be important to you or to a potential purchaser of your business.

Hayes Knight have worked on both buy side and sell side transactions - for domestic and international purchasers buying Australian businesses, for vendors being acquired, and for merger partners - from large corporations acquiring a new opportunity or new market, and for small and medium businesses that find themselves sitting across the table from a much larger party.

We can work with you on preparation, business valuation, financial modelling, due diligence on target businesses, and advice on transaction terms – often, we’re the support for the process end-to-end.

When acquiring a business (or being acquired), due diligence is the assurance that how the business has been represented is realistic and there is nothing material in the background that would impact its value. It should be more than a compliance checkbox of standard items but reveal the factors that determine commercial, financial, and operational viability.

Due diligence is not a one-size-fits-all process and every due diligence program will have unique requirements based on the business, the industry and its environment, the type of sale, and often, the purchaser. This is where Hayes Knight’s experience makes the difference.

Hayes Knight has decades of experience working with businesses undertaking or responding to a due diligence. It can be a daunting and time consuming process - let our experience make it worth the time and energy.

Succession planning identifies, plans for, and executes an exit strategy from your business. While retirement might be the catalyst, increasingly, succession is set to a timeframe or when a particular goal has been achieved that maximises the business’s value.

The options for how a movement of an interest might occur are varied but usually focus on the transfer of some or all of the equity held in the business over a period or at a defined point in time, and the payment of consideration for the equity transferred. Generally, succession occurs in one of four ways:

Family group succession
Co-owner, management or employee buyout
Sale or merger, and
Private equity investment or public listing.

Hayes Knight’s experienced team can help you navigate the path forward, the options and the strategy to maximise your outcome, and the execution. Planning early pays dividends.

Clients come to Hayes Knight to take their next step.

For many of our entrepreneurial clients we are their sounding board for future ambitions; fine tuning ideas into a tangible strategy. And when opportunity arises, we help manage the process of a sale, acquisition, merger or succession.

The Hayes Knight corporate finance team have decades of experience in due diligence, transactions and negotiation, sale of business and succession planning. We can fulfil your specific requirements or support you through a transaction process.

We back up our strategic planning with exceptional implementation and the capacity to overlay the necessary expertise in tax, risk management, financial reporting, structuring, and regulatory requirements both here and internationally.

As Peter Drucker said, “Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things.” At Hayes Knight, we help you achieve both.