ETA·BRAINa Katyella project

Acquiring Minds

From €4 Million, to Zero, to €12 Million

Excerpts · 367 segments · ~1:34:58 long

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And now going back to the equity for a second and the investors. So as we recall, the investors said, no, thank you, we're not going to fund your search here because Czech Republic's a small market. But we'll entertain.

If you find a deal, we'll entertain it. You guys found a deal, they entertained it. But they still have to.

So, so they, even if they like the business and they like you and all of that checks out, they still have to think about how they're going to get their, a return on the capital, how they're going to get their capital back and a return on that capital. And so they have to think about your exit of this business, of course, and being in a smaller market, that's that.

So that challenge remains that, that how liquid is this investment going to be on the other end? Now you've already told us that private equity is, is quite active in the Czech Republic. Maybe that's the answer.

But how did they, you know, you, you. Just because you found a good deal doesn't mean you've escaped the sense of kind of a ceiling or a limitation to a small market.

Yes. Well, as for the exit, from the beginning we've been talking about two options. Either the investors sell their stake to another buyer, plenty of PE companies or family offices in the Czech Republic, or I and Corbyn will want to buy them out. So those were the two options.

They are still on the table. So especially seeing how active family offices and PE are in the Czech Republic, we were comfortable that exit options will be there.

One last question on how you structure this, Ivana. I guess the terms that you got with investors, when you have a deal in hand, that usually strengthens your hand with respect to your investors, it's, it's no longer speculative. You actually have a deal that they can look at.

Did that strengthen your hand? Did you get different terms than you would have otherwise had you just gone into this? In a traditional search fund?

It is very common that as a self funded searcher you get better terms than a traditional searcher. But we didn't. We didn't. We are under var very traditional terms. And the reason is that we were very like particular about our investor groups.

Investor group. We wanted those investors who said that they would come into any deal only under traditional terms. So we basically exchanged potential for better terms for having really high quality investors. So that was trade off that we made and we are happy with it. I think it worked out very well.

When you buy the business and get in the business, is it the business you thought it was?

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