The purchase price hangs on numbers from the three years before the process. We provide the financial leadership that puts that base in place in time: audit-ready accounts, documented adjustments, a complete data room.
A sale is planned, announced or resolved by the shareholders. The process itself takes six to twelve months – but what gets examined is the three years before it. Changes in the chart of accounts, systems or accounting practice, undocumented adjustments and a patchy data room then cost purchase price or time.
Meanwhile the business carries on, and the preparation is additional load that ends with closing.
The interim CFO puts in place the numbers the purchase price depends on. That means: monthly closes on fixed dates with consistent accruals, an unbroken, reconcilable history of at least three years, and every earnings adjustment documented individually – one-off costs, shareholder remuneration above market, discontinued operations, transaction costs.
Then the data room and documentation: contracts signed and complete, shareholder resolutions filed, ownership documented. The most common reason for delays in due diligence is not bad numbers but missing documents.
And finally the uncomfortable work: naming dependencies before the buyer side finds them. A point you raise yourself is a fact – the same point, discovered by the other side, is negotiating leverage.
How long does it take today to produce reconciled monthly reporting for the last three years by product, customer and region? The answer sets the whole timetable.
Fixed closing dates, consistent accruals, reconciled balances, reconciliation across changes in chart of accounts or systems.
Every adjustment documented individually, contracts and resolutions filed completely, dependencies named rather than hidden.
Preparation of the numbers, often together with an audit firm. Then handover into the actual sale process.
About twelve to eighteen months before the planned process. The three years before it are what gets examined – whoever starts with the process launch can no longer change anything, only explain it.
One test: how long does it take to produce complete, reconciled monthly reporting for the last three years by product, customer and region? Days means the base is there. Weeks means it has not started yet.
Adjustments without evidence are struck out, and every struck-out item lowers the purchase price directly, because adjusted earnings are the valuation base.
Not necessarily, but it usually pays twice over: the process is faster because questions are anticipated, and your own weak points become visible before the buyer side sees them.
Day rates between EUR 1,400 and 2,500 depending on size and scope of responsibility. At lower weekly utilisation the effective rate falls.
The service: Interim CFO for private equity portfolios. How a mandate runs is set out under Interim CFO, day rates by role on the pricing page.
Terms in the glossary: Exit preparation, Exit readiness and Carve-out balance sheet.
Related situation: Carve-out.