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We are mandated by the seller. For low and mid-market owners we set the position, build the buyer universe, and hold several acquirers on one timetable to signing.
The sale below is a spectup sell-side mandate, and the marks beside it are the companies and funds that have put a transaction in our hands.
A healthcare business with no process running, taken to a field of strategic acquirers and sold to one of them.
Lane Health
BREATHE
Society Brands
be
CreatorIQ
PopMeals
GORD
KLAYD
OnePulse
Perplexity
Imperative VCEvery figure here comes out of a transaction that closed, and spectup was on the mandate for every one of them.
I have worked with two other sell-side M&A advisors. You produced the best results by a very wide margin.
20strategic and acquirer meetings booked on the mandate
MastercardProvidence Equity PartnersCrowe GlobalDailyPayOptimal BlueKochavaHealthWare SystemsMiCamp Solutions
A sale clears just above the second-highest offer. The acquirer that never buys your company is the one that decides what the buyer pays for it, and spectup is mandated to put that acquirer in the room.
The only offer is the whole market. There is nothing in the room for it to clear, so it gets accepted, negotiated downward, or declined.
We bring four to one timetable. Acquirer B is the underbidder, and the line settles just above it.
Lose the second offer and the price falls to the third. Nothing about the business changed. The only thing that moved is who else we still have live.
Holding that underbidder to the end is our job on the mandate. It is why we run to a deadline and keep every qualified party warm.
Illustrative shape, not a valuation.
Talk through your own field of acquirersspectup settles all five with you while the company is still private. Each is a lever on the same number, and each gets harder for anyone to move once an acquirer has seen the business.
What the company is sold as: which revenue is contracted, which growth is already funded, and which part of its market it holds.
Normalised earnings, the add-backs behind them, and the working capital and net debt positions a buyer’s diligence will go after.
Customer concentration, dependence on the owner, and contracts that do not assign on a change of control.
The number you will sign at, the number you will walk from, and what you will accept in shares, deferred consideration or an earn-out.
Every name written down and approved by you, with the ones you will not have approached struck off before anyone picks up a phone.
An acquirer takes a call from spectup that it would not take from you, and three assets are the reason. We built all three and we run them ourselves.
We hold 440+ direct relationships with acquirers, sponsors and lenders, every one out of a transaction we closed. When we put your business in front of a buyer it arrives through someone they already know.
Our signal engine watches for the week an acquirer becomes a buyer: a fund closed, a platform upsized, a mandate to consolidate, a partner moved. Valicon.ai holds the primary data we check it against, on what each one has bought and at what size. We built and run both.
We publish to 2,000 B2B financial decision makers every two weeks, run a podcast with 8,000 listeners and put a million impressions a year in front of this market. We call an acquirer that has been reading us for a year.
spectup releases the company in three steps and holds every one of them. This is the same page at each step. Lift the bars and see what an acquirer is actually holding.
Aurex Systems GmbH is a managed IT services provider in Munich, founded in 2009 and run by its two shareholders. Revenue is EUR 18.4M against a published band of EUR 10 to 25M, on 64 staff, with three years of contracted growth. It is for sale because of shareholder succession. Its largest customer is Vantor Logistik AG at 22% of revenue, on a contract that runs to March 2029. Margin is 19.1% and the owners will stay twelve months past closing.
Sector, a revenue band, the growth and the reason for sale. An acquirer can decide whether it wants to look, and it cannot work out who you are from any of it.
We send this. You approved the list
We name you only against an agreement that is signed and dated, and we record which party received what and on which day. Nine parties saw the profile here; not all nine get this far.
Signed non-disclosure agreement
Customer concentration, margin, contract end dates and what the owners do after closing. These are the facts a buyer retrades on, so they go out only once it has put a number in writing.
An offer, in writing, before the room opens
Six stages from mandate to signing, every one of them run by spectup. Each ends in something you can hold, so you always know what has been produced and what is still owed.
spectup agrees with you what is being sold, the range it goes to market at, the floor you walk from and what we are paid, all of it before any work starts.
You holdA signed mandateWe write what the company is sold as and build the numbers pack behind it, then close off what a buyer’s diligence would otherwise find and price in.
You holdAn information memorandumWe build the universe from our own network and systems. You strike off every name you do not want approached, and nobody is contacted until you have.
You holdAn approved acquirer listA partner makes every approach personally, no names first, and takes each party up the disclosure ladder at the pace the process sets rather than the pace they ask for.
You holdSigned non-disclosure agreementsEvery party bids to the same date. spectup compares them on price, structure and conditions rather than on headline number alone, and we keep the underbidder live.
You holdIndicative offers, comparedWe run the data room, manage the buyer’s diligence and negotiate price, structure, earn-out and conditions alongside your own legal counsel.
You holdA signed purchase agreementOpen any row. Named where the client has agreed to it, and carrying sector, structure and size band where they have not.
A healthcare business with no process running. We built the acquirer list, took it to a field of strategics on one timetable and ran the sale to signing.
spectup acted for the seller, and was paid by the seller
Four qualified acquirers held to one timetable, with an underbidder live to the end. The second-highest offer is what decided the number the winner paid.
spectup acted for the seller, and was paid by the seller
A no-names approach throughout. The company was named to each party only against a signed non-disclosure agreement, and it sold without the market learning it was available.
spectup acted for the seller, and was paid by the seller
A sale and a capital raise run in parallel, so the shareholders can take whichever of the two prices better. Details are withheld until the process completes.
spectup acts for the seller, and is paid by the seller
An acquirer buys inside a sector before it buys a company. These are the nine low and mid-market sectors where spectup’s acquirer relationships are deepest, and they are where the transactions above were done.
spectup is mandated out of Munich and runs sale processes across four regions. The acquirer for a business is rarely in the market that business sits in, which is why the list crosses borders on almost every mandate.
Sell-side M&A advisory in the United States and Canada. Strategic acquirers and private equity sponsors in New York, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Toronto. The largest single pool of buyers for a European mid-market company.
The buyer for a European company is often on another continent, and spectup approaches them by name from the desk that holds the mandate.
Discuss a saleTwo people, both of them on your mandate from the first call to signing. No analyst runs the process and no associate makes the approach.
spectup holds a small number of sell-side mandates at a time, because a process needs two partners on it for its whole length. Saying no early is part of that.
| The company | spectup takes the mandate | spectup would pass |
|---|---|---|
| Enterprise value | EUR 5M to 100MThe band a dedicated desk changes the price in | Under EUR 5M, or over EUR 100MA regional broker below it, a syndicate above it |
| The shareholders | Have agreed to sellA group that can decide, and has | Want to see what it might fetchA process run to find out spends your confidentiality once |
| The accounts | Two clean years, or a quarter awayWe will put the quarter in before we go out | Nothing a buyer could rely onA number that moves under diligence gets retraded at signing |
| Acquirers so far | None, or informal conversationsThe field is still ours to build | One buyer, terms already agreedYou need a transaction lawyer, not a sell-side desk |
| The reason | Succession, a carve-out, or a fund past its holdSomething an acquirer can act on | A price decided before the workIf the number is fixed first there is nothing to do but miss it |
| Check your fit in one call |
Two figures, and only one of them is large. spectup charges a monthly retainer while the mandate runs, and a transaction fee that lands only if the company sells.
Monthly retainer+Transaction fee
Eight monthly retainers while the process runs, then one transaction fee at signing.
The desk, the equity story, the numbers pack, the acquirer list and every approach. Flat for the term, agreed before we start.
A percentage of transaction value, capped in the mandate. Paid only if a transaction signs, which is why we do not take a mandate we cannot close.
The ones that come up before anybody talks about a specific company.
Sell-side M&A advisory is the mandate to sell a company, held by the seller’s advisor rather than the buyer’s. spectup sets the range and the floor with you, writes the equity story, builds a list of acquirers you approve before anyone is contacted, and runs several of them to one deadline. We are paid by the seller and by nobody else on the transaction.
There is no rate card. The transaction fee is the substance and it falls as transaction size rises, so a percentage quoted without a size band tells you almost nothing. You have both figures in writing after the first call.
Longer than most owners expect, and most of it happens before the market sees anything. The equity story, the numbers pack and the acquirer list are finished first. After that it depends on how many parties convert and how clean diligence is. The date every acquirer bids to is set in the mandate.
Not from us. An acquirer first sees a one-page profile with no name on it. We name you only against a signed and dated non-disclosure agreement that records who received what, and the data room opens last, to parties that have already made an offer. You approve the list before a single company is contacted, so the only people who ever hear the question are the ones you put on it.
Yes, on the commercial terms. Your own counsel does the documents.
You get a band, not a number, and you get it before you sign anything. It comes off transactions in your sector at your size that actually closed, adjusted for what a buyer prices differently in your business: customer concentration, how much revenue is contracted, and how much of the company runs without you in it. The band then moves once acquirers start competing.
Two documents, two moments. The teaser is one page with no name on it. The memorandum carries your name and your numbers, and goes only to parties that have signed.
Size decides it. A broker lists a business and works from the buyers who come to the listing. An advisor builds the acquirer list from scratch and runs several of them to one deadline. Under about EUR 5M a regional broker fits the transaction better, and we will say so on the first call.
Both, on the same list and to the same deadline. A strategic pays for what your business does inside its own; a fund pays for what it is worth in five years.
Yes. It negotiates differently from a full exit, because the buyer is also buying you staying, and that goes in the mandate before anyone is approached.
That is a term, and terms are negotiable for exactly as long as there is more than one bidder. Retention, your own role after closing, and what gets announced and when all sit in the offer next to the price. One buyer writes those on its own.
Ask four things. Who is on the mandate day to day, and is it the person in the pitch. How many mandates the desk runs at once. Whether the acquirer list is built or licensed from a database everyone else buys. What happens to the fee if the company does not sell. Our answers: two partners start to finish, a small number of mandates at a time, a list we build ourselves, and a transaction fee that lands only on completion.
Two years of accounts a buyer can verify, and a written account of what the business does without you in it. spectup does this as the first stage of a mandate, not as a separate service.
Ask that of everyone, and ask for the sector, the size band and the structure rather than a logo. Ours are healthcare, logistics and IT services, EUR 5M to 100M, to strategics and to funds.
Two partners, start to finish. Nothing is handed to an analyst.
You have paid the retainer and no transaction fee, and you keep what the process produced: the equity story, the numbers pack, the acquirer list, and written feedback from every party that looked. We will also tell you why it did not clear. It is almost always the number, the timing, or something in the accounts a buyer could not get comfortable with.
Sell-side M&A advisory
spectup is mandated by the seller and paid by that side only. One call covers the band we think your company clears, the acquirers who would be on the list, and what the process costs.
Nine parties, and not one of them knows your name yet.
