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    Deal Advisory

    Deal advisory is shaping a transaction and testing what the business is genuinely worth, on either side of the table.

    Capability · 1 service within this

    In Growth Strategy: Choose the Route, Execute the Deal, Realise the Value

    How we help with Deal Advisory

    Price is the last thing to negotiate and the first thing everyone argues about.

    1. Establish what the business is genuinely worth

      Valuation from several angles, tested against what a buyer will actually underwrite rather than what a model can be made to produce.

    2. Shape the transaction

      What is being sold, to whom, in what form, and what the seller keeps. The shape decides more of the outcome than the negotiation does.

    3. Run the counterparty process

      Approach, information flow and competitive tension managed so terms are compared rather than accepted in sequence.

    4. Hold the line through to close

      Diligence findings, price adjustments and the long tail of conditions, managed so the deal that closes resembles the deal that was agreed.

    Services within Deal Advisory

    Price is the last thing to negotiate and the first thing everyone argues about.

    FAQ

    Questions founders ask about Deal Advisory

    What does a deal advisor do?

    Shapes the transaction, tests the valuation, runs the counterparty process and manages it to close. In practice a large part of the value is holding the process together once diligence starts producing findings.

    When should we bring in an advisor?

    Before approaching anyone. Most of the leverage in a transaction is created by how it is set up, and by the time a buyer is in conversation the structural choices have largely been made.

    How is the business actually valued?

    Comparable transactions, comparable listed companies and a discounted cash flow, triangulated. The honest answer is that the number is set by what a specific buyer will underwrite, and the methods are how you work out who that buyer is.

    What usually goes wrong in a deal?

    Findings in diligence that were known internally and never addressed, and terms agreed in principle that turn out to mean different things to each side. Both are preventable before a process starts.

    What our research says about Deal Advisory

    Investors and acquirers are not naive. They will rebuild the revenue number themselves, on their own terms, and the gap between what they find and what the company reported is what determines the diligence outcome.

    Srikar Kedarisetty, in Revenue Recognition Mistakes That Distort Reality

    Whether you are raising a round, selling to a strategic acquirer, or taking on structured debt, your value is a multiple of your earnings and the quality of those earnings.

    Sriram Chidambaram, in Pricing strategy for Indian startups and MSMEs: the ultimate guide to profitable growth and enterprise value

    Disorganised data rooms delay deals by weeks and knock materially off valuations, because buyers read disorganisation as operational risk and price it in: through a lower offer, a bigger holdback, or simply walking away.

    Sriram Chidambaram, in Investors don't fund your numbers. They fund their confidence in your numbers.

    A revenue multiple is an earnings multiple in disguise. EV/Revenue equals EV/EBITDA multiplied by margin, always. Applying a revenue multiple is therefore an implicit assertion about the margin this revenue will eventually produce.

    Sriram Chidambaram, in When Revenue Multiples Apply, and When They Don't

    As Haripriya V, who leads our investment banking work, pointed out, a local buyer rarely wins a deal like this on money. It wins because the same assets cost it less to run, so a business that weighed on a global group can pay its way for a local one.

    Karthik Beknal, in Why Amplifon left India, and what Hearzap sees in the same clinics

    Guides and downloads on Deal Advisory

    E-books and masterclass material from the SRF library, free to download.

    The people behind Deal Advisory

    Deal Advisory is run by the studio team: one multidisciplinary team whose pods work in tandem, matched to the sector and the stage the company is in.

    Haripriya V

    Investment Banking pod

    Led by Haripriya V

    Lead - Investment Banking & Business Growth. Manages transactions and strategic capital events.

    See the pod structure
    Studio TeamThe operators, investors and builders who run engagements end to end.Meet them

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