ALL BUSINESSES ARE NOT CREATED EQUAL
For the most important transaction of your life, you deserve the best advice.
Transaction Advisory
Sellside
Are you thinking of selling all or a portion of your business?
Perhaps you have been approached by a buyer or an investor. And perhaps its you who are initiating the search. This could be an opportunity to take your business to the next level or take some profit and get rewarded for your hard work or both.
Whatever your motivation, it is not a decision to be taken lightly, the counterparty will come fully prepared and so should you. You deserve to have the best representation to drive your interest and realise a successful outcome.
Sale of a Business ● Carveouts ● Divestitures
Our unique model is purpose-crafted to drive value for you
- Readiness assessment – we carry out a rigorous evaluation of market entry preparedness and timing optionality for your business.
- Positioning – we identify your business’s key value drivers, structure the transaction and build a compelling pitch deck. Then we prepare your team to best communicate your business’s uniqueness to potential buyers.
- Investor targeting – we compile a robust list of credible potential buyers with the capacity to engage in a competitive process.
- Process Management – we help you run a tight process, driving deal momentum from start to finish, with minimum distractions to your business.
- Close we adhere strictly to your instructions to present the best alternatives and drive negotiations toward a timely close, and the greatest outcome for you.
Buyside
Will the business you acquire help you grow?
Buying a business is a complex art requiring deal discernment. You want to choose from a select pool that strongly aligns to your strategic interests.
Leveraging our deep insights, sector coverage and extensive network of relationships in the private markets, DFG can identify unique prospects for clients to consider, while also supporting prospect evaluations. We also assist management teams contemplating a buyout and advice on a pathway to owning your future.
When you decide to engage, we would act only on your instructions as we work with your team through the life-cycle of the transaction toward a successful completion.
Acquisitions ● Buyouts ● Concession ● Bid Management
Let DFG initiate contact with the prospect & cover your blindside
- Prospects are more open to dealing with an intermediary than with a party who might be a competitor or deemed hostile
- Nurturing and qualifying prospects is a long-term game. We continue to maintain a strong network of banks, private equity, owners and family businesses, to build deal flow and empower you to act when you want to.
- DFG’s industry expertise and transactions experience creates unique perspectives and readiness advantage to help you protect your blindside risks and proceed with confidence through your transaction.
Transaction Support
Are you initiating a transaction with all the capabilities its success demands?
You should: capability breeds readiness and readiness breeds success. But you don’t need to have all the skills and resources in-house. We can complement your team with the right set of services that align with the goal you seek.
DFG provides business owners, private equity firms, banks and DFIs with transaction support services to augment in-house capabilities. We act as an extension of your team to bring you world-class professional expertise.
An independent valuation of your business, shareholding or asset is always a good starting point for any financing plan or negotiation. Determining fair market value requires strong analytics, experience, judgement and objectivity. Our professionals take time to understand the key variables that determine what your business is worth and its marketability.
Lenders, investors, and government agencies require proper evaluation of both the opportunities and risks relating to a transaction or program. Our Financial Due Diligence services enable clients to evaluate the realizability of reported net assets and key assumptions driving forecasts, to determine quality (sustainability) of earnings, such as, true costs of ownership; run-rate of working capital and capital expenditure requirements; and post-closing purchase price adjustments.
Business owners contemplating a transaction event want no surprises that may constrain the realisation of maximum value. A Transaction Readiness Assessment will help to identify and mitigate issues that could potentially concern strategic buyers or financial investors and erode value.
Pre- and post-transaction, we provide services that enable our clients to identify, retain and unlock value. Our typical engagements include mobilizing the separation management office; TSA documentation, negotiation and structuring; post-closing obligations monitoring; and Day 1 work design and execution.
As subject matter experts, we provide litigation support, expert testimony, and fairness opinions and analysis to our clients. Our areas of expertise include: exit planning, shareholder liquidity events and strategic assessments.
Special situations can range from unique business challenges to industry-wide disruptions. Whatever the case, businesses facing imminent threats need to promptly and tactically assess and counter novel conditions that seldom respond to template solutions. DFG’s Transaction Advisory team can rapidly assess a range of strategic alternatives including tailored solutions with particular focus on liquidity improvement, restructuring and general strategic advisory.
Private Capital Raise
GROW WITH CONFIDENCE. AND BE FUNDED
We position your business to get the financing you need, when you need it.
Shouldn’t you raise financing from the right sources and on terms that best fit your needs?
Whether you are raising capital to grow through organic expansion or acquisition, or to recapitalise your business and strengthen your balance sheet, or to create a liquidity event for shareholders; DFG gets it. We help our clients access capital by analyzing and presenting various funding options from debt to equity and in-between.
Leverage our broad network of capital providers, ranging from high-net-worth-individuals and family offices to private equity and institutional capital providers, as well as our structuring expertise to negotiate and secure financing on terms that suit you.
Growth Capital ● Recapitalizations ● Debt Services
Equity finance is probably the most basic route to sourcing growth capital for your business and it can be the most complex. Essentially, it entails selling shares or ownership interest in your business to investors willing to partake in its risks and rewards. DFG’s advantage ensures efficient access to the equity investors whose interests are aligned with yours – ranging from high net worth individuals and family offices to private equity and institutional capital providers. We also guide you through the entire arranging process from marketing to negotiating optimal terms, and to timely raising the capital you need.
Securing appropriate credit for your business requires expertise; understanding what type of loan you need, where to find it and how best to get it. In today’s dynamic debt market, DFG can help you access a variety of loans from banks and alternative lenders to meet your financing objective – whether it be funding short term liquidity, business expansions, acquisitions or refinancings. Our origination competency spans working capital, term loans, mezzanines, equipment finance and subordinated instruments. Let us start with a capital assessment plan to evaluate cash flow scenarios for your business that will appeal to the prospective lenders.
Impact financing through grants, concessional and/or market conforming loans is increasingly available for organisations seeking to create positive impact beyond financial returns. Sources we work with comprise governments, development finance institutions and impact investors with a predisposition to private sector development; but each have their respective stringent qualification and compliance requirements. DFG will help you prepare a comprehensive and defensible funding plan to articulate your funding objectives and additionalities, and position your organisation (business, NGO, government, department or fund) to qualify for grants or funding.
Capital intensive projects require innovative and non-tradition solutions to attain bankability. DFG advises clients – governments and private institutions – in the development of greenfield opportunities, public private partnerships (PPP, P3), infrastructure and cash flows-based financing. Our experience with complex transactions spans sponsor advisory, securitizations, restructuring and recapitalization, across several industries including energy, mining, telecoms and construction. Our specialized team works with you from concept planning and viability assessments, to financial structuring and arranging, to achieve financial close.
Altering the capital structure of a business (also known as recapitalization or restructuring) can provide existing shareholders or owners with equity injection and debt that deliver immediate value creation advantages, for example: liquidity through a dividend distribution, funding to finance an acquisition or a leveraged buyout, or an exit strategy through a full or partial de-risking payout to owners to unlock the significant value they have created in their businesses. Just as no two businesses are the same – aside their complexities and benefit to owners of maintaining control of their business – no recapitalization transactions are either. Recaps often have legal and tax ramifications among other complexities requiring technical and commercially sound expertise in special situations; which we provide. DFG’s process starts with a deep dive to understand your business and financial objectives. We then develop an optimum capital structure and funding scenarios to position your business to equity investors and lenders.
An effective roadmap must precede any transaction in order to achieve great outcomes in financing strategy execution. Our deep insights and analytics inure to our clients through a rigorous advisory process where we obtain detailed understanding of your financing objectives and business model and work with you to determine which markets to market access, what is the current pulse of investors and what funding options are available. Whether for or in anticipation of a transaction, DFG has the expertise to give you the confidence you need to succeed. Our funding strategy & advisory services – e.g. fund development, ratings advisory, transaction structuring and succession planning – are tailored to suit businesses, owners, financial sponsors and sovereigns. In addition, as your independent advisors we do not have the conflicts of interest that banks and large consulting firms do – we truly work for you.
Private Sector Development
ACCESS TO FINANCE & MARKETS IS KEY TO GROWTH
Mobilize capacity and public policy to create opportunities for businesses and economies.
How does your support for private enterprises align with your strategy for economic development?
Economic development, as measured by growth, and the material improvement in the quality of lives, requires both commitment and capabilities. Sound public policies, governance and enterprise promotion strategies can underpin additionalities that crowd-in private capital and create markets.
As trusted advisors and catalysts, our services to stakeholders of development – such as governments, financial institutions and indigenous communities; also, CSOs/NGOs, trade partners, shareholders and entrepreneurs – strengthen programs, mitigate execution risks and maximize social impact toward attaining Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Governments recognize the importance of a thriving private sector to economic growth. Development finance plays a crucial role in steering, de-risking and encouraging much needed public and private capital to catalyze both the development and sustainability of local businesses.
As an innovative financial institutions and public policy advisory group, we provide clients with expertise on fiscal governance, funding strategy, framework development and sector analysis grounded in deep industry experience. Key categories of our development finance service offering include:
- Access to Finance
- Public-Public Partnerships & Concessions
- Technical Assistance & Training
Great companies have cohesive, focused and informed leaders who can adapt and forge through business cycles and market shocks. Aligning your team of corporate leaders and board directors to a shared roadmap for transformative transactions requires timely access to insights and analysis to inform judgement. DFG provides advice to clients on a range of shareholder issues including preparedness for strategic initiatives; corporate & parenting strategy; and environmental, social and governance (ESG or GRC).
Our Shareholder Advisory, while designed for the private sector, can also be repurposed for the public sector and civil society organizations (CSOs, NPOs, NGOs).
The very essence of trade is access to markets. Businesses need access to suppliers and customers to succeed and create jobs which increase economic prosperity and raise living standards. And governments have a responsibility to develop policies that promote domestic and international trade, build global competitiveness and attract Foreign Direct Investments.
DFG advices clients on a broad range of Market Access & Trade issues such as, global value chains, investment promotion, export finance, market assessments, framework development, opportunity analysis and due diligence.
In addition, through our broad network of relationships in North America and sub-Saharan Africa, we connect clients to trading and technical partners, and identify markets for produce and services across several sectors including financial services, agri-business, technology, mining, oil & gas, renewable energy and power.
- Canada and Nigeria trade promotion