In short
Owner dependency is usually found in diligence and rarely priced well. Corefield assesses it on evidence, puts a cost, a date and a confidence level on every finding, and, after closing, can move the seller’s knowledge into your people before he leaves.
What do buyers usually miss?
What leaves when the seller leaves. The financial statements show what the business earned with the owner running it. They don’t show who prices the unusual jobs, whose phone the biggest customers call, whose name is on the licence, or what stops when he takes a week off. Those are the things that change the day after closing.
How can Corefield help before closing?
The Buyer Review is the operating workstream of due diligence for acquisitions below about $10 million in enterprise value, delivered inside your exclusivity window. It covers dependency on the seller, equipment and capital needs for the first three years, capacity, systems, key people, whether licences survive closing, and which customer relationships are likely to walk.
How can Corefield help after closing?
The First Year puts Corefield inside the business for twelve to eighteen months to draw out what the seller knows before he goes, and to prove it with a Three-Week Test on the seller himself.
The Buyer Review
What will this business cost you once the seller leaves, and when?
The operating workstream of due diligence, delivered inside your exclusivity window.
The First Year
How do you get the seller’s knowledge out before he goes?
Inside the business after closing, moving what the seller knows into your people and systems.
What do lenders get from this?
Key-person risk is a common reason for an acquisition loan to be declined or heavily conditioned. Corefield’s work produces evidence a credit committee can act on: the business scored on an evidence standard, the lowest dimension reported on its own, and, where the work has been done, a signed log of the owner’s three-week absence. The Record presents it in a form that can be checked quickly.
Who typically uses this?
Search funds and self-funded acquirers, family offices buying outside their own expertise, lower-mid-market private equity, strategic acquirers who want a second opinion, and lenders who need key-person risk quantified rather than described.
How are conflicts of interest handled?
Strictly. Corefield never acts for both buyer and seller in the same deal. Neither Corefield nor any business connected to its owner ever bids for a business Corefield has assessed for a buyer. Corefield’s owner also owns a company that acquires businesses; that is disclosed in every engagement letter. See Our commitments.
What doesn’t Corefield do on a deal?
It doesn’t do quality of earnings, legal or tax diligence, environmental assessment or valuation, and it never takes a success fee tied to a deal closing. It works alongside the professionals who do those things.