Business Partnerships and Start-ups

New business start-ups frequently experience problems, such as:

• Lack of funding.
• Inability to assess the financial dynamics of the business and prepare a strategic plan and financial forecasts.
• The need to negotiate major contractual relationships.
• Gaps in the management team.

These problems can be difficult to solve when you are trying to establish a new business and there is no money to support the recruitment of additional staff or engage professional advisers.

Unlike many of our competitors, FC is keen to be involved in exceptionally high-quality business start-ups, even though there may initially be insufficient funds to reward us by payment of fees. In some cases we can instead join the new business as a partner and work with our new colleagues to help establish the business, prepare business plans, negotiate key commercial arrangements and introduce financial controls. Where required, we also help partner businesses to raise debt and/or equity finance and to recruit additional directors and senior managers. Ultimately, we wish to help these companies to progress to flotation or trade sale.

We generally take a small shareholding in partner businesses and seek to make a return on our time investment through capital growth. Fees will only be charged if the business can afford to pay them.

We help our partners look after financial and commercial matters, while they concentrate on business innovation and development.

Financial and Strategic Advice

Our everyday work brings us into contact with hundreds of different businesses and requires us to analyse how they work and how they generate cash and profits. These analytical skills, combined with our corporate finance expertise, enable us to assess financial performance and consider strategic options in an informed manner, for example:

• How much growth can be funded?
• Is a business activity generating acceptable returns on capital?
• How should risk be reflected in capital investment decisions?
• Should the company grow organically or by acquisition?
• Is the management structure right, or are there gaps?
• Does a proposed capital expenditure programme enhance shareholder value?
• Are the corporate governance arrangements appropriate to the company’s size and funding structure?
• Is the company making full and proper use of information technology?

Some of our clients do not have sufficient in-house resources to address this kind of issue themselves, and ask us to assist, either by retaining us to provide ongoing financial and strategic advice or by instructing us to undertake specific projects, such as budgetting or business planning. In some cases, an FC partner will join the client’s board.

As always, we are independent in our thinking, challenge convention, generate ideas and we say what we think.