Readying Crossbridge for a premium sale by focusing on growth

This week’s blog looks at how Equiteq, with a three-year growth support programme, helped Crossbridge to grow in preparation for sale. Crossbridge was transformed into a fast growing business, which later sold for a value that exceeded shareholder expectations.

Crossbridge is a specialist management consultancy which works with clients in the financial services sector to improve their operating model, internal operations and culture. Three years prior to the sale of the business, Crossbridge employed Equiteq to run an Equity Growth Accelerator (EGA) workshop with the aim of building the business’s value.

To get started, Equiteq ran a two-day workshop with the leadership team to see how they fared against other sector peers. From the outcome of the workshops we were able to map out where the company needed to be positioned, agree timescales, and lay out the actions the leadership team needed to commit to in order to achieve these objectives.

Using our ‘8 Lever model’, Crossbridge were able to chart their progress on an annual basis. During this period, our approach contributed to 66% revenue growth in two years.

Although Crossbridge had achieved significant organic growth, at the last of these annual appraisals the leadership team decided to start looking for a bigger business partner who would provide scale to deliver larger projects – and, ultimately accelerate growth even further.

Tip: 8 essential tips for planning for growth and exit.

At this juncture, Crossbridge appointed Equiteq to prepare the business for sale and act as their lead advisor throughout the process.

We kicked off the sale process by producing high quality sales documentation. This was followed by a robust buyer outreach process that secured interest and offers from multiple buyers. We negotiated and improved on these offers on behalf of Crossbridge, leaving the shareholders to decide on their preferred option.

Once a buyer had been confirmed, Equiteq facilitated a due diligence process – an important part of the process – and advised on the sales and purchased agreement terms.

How did this deliver value to the client?

• Our deep knowledge of the buyer space helped us identify the best partners for Crossbridge. We were able to produce a targeted list of international buyers which generated huge interest in the company;
• Following an active sale process where buyers were in a competitive bid situation, Crossbridge achieved a final sale value that exceeded shareholder expectations;
• Again, over the course of our growth support programme, the 8 Lever model contributed to 66% revenue growth in two years.

Crossbridge was eventually sold to Synechron, the largest independent pure-play technology consulting and outsourcing provider for the financial services industry. The combination of Synechron’s technical consulting expertise and Crossbridge’s business consulting capabilities created a leading financial services consulting proposition.

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