Praxity launches M&A portal

Praxity has just launched its hotly anticipated Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A) portal to help member firms provide a better service for their clients.

Created in response to requests by member firms, the M&A hub provides a searchable listing of buyers and sellers across the globe.

When a client wishes to sell a business or make an acquisition, the details can now be posted on the M&A portal by professionals representing the client. Fellow professionals can quickly match buyers and sellers anywhere in the world. When a good match is found, the firms work together to facilitate the transaction.

The portal is exclusively for use by member firms who must register for access. Once registered, firms can be alerted to opportunities as soon as they come up.

Simple and intuitive

Andy Ryder, Corporate Finance Partner at Shorts in the UK, who originated and helped develop the portal, says:

“Following an extensive period of scoping, development and testing, we are excited to announce the M&A portal is now ‘live’ and we look forward to as many people as possible engaging. The hub has been specially created to provide opportunities for professionals across the Alliance for the first time in a simple, intuitive way. The audience for these opportunities is not just corporate finance experts, but also professionals from any discipline, who will all have clients looking for the added value of being brought potential acquisition opportunities or being made aware of acquisitive companies in their sector.”

Calling on member firms to maximise its potential, Andy says: “Given the significant investment by Praxity in this initiative, I would please ask that all Praxity member firms embrace this opportunity. It would be fantastic if we could have as many disposal mandates and acquisition criteria as possible on the portal as this will increase the chances of successfully connecting buyers and sellers to everyone’s benefit.” He adds: “It is also worth remembering that you don’t need to be formally engaged for M&A with your clients to post criteria – it is also possible to post ‘non-mandated’ client criteria. This is expected to particularly help non-corporate finance professional who can, for example, post the acquisition criteria of their audit clients on the M&A Hub to enable them to take interesting acquisition opportunities to their clients.”

End-to-end support

The M&A portal complements Praxity’s existing Financial Advisory Service (FAS) group which provides support with valuation, financial, IT and HR due diligence to help ensure best practice for cross-border transactions. Together, the M&A and FAS resources provide a full end-to-end corporate finance solution for clients wishing to:

  • Sell assets
  • Make acquisitions
  • Carry out mergers and other transactions
  • Get expert advice on valuations and financial due diligence

Gerhard Meyer, co-chair of the Praxity FAS Group and managing partner at FALK in Germany says: “We want to give comfort to our clients working across borders. We want them to know we have high quality firms that will take care of their interests, from valuation concepts through to all kinds of due diligence.”

Explaining the importance of providing an end-to-end service, Gerhard adds:

“It’s very important to have this facility within the Alliance for the benefit of our clients. For example, if a German client is approached by an Italian company which wants to sell a business, we contact the Italian partner within Praxity to see if the valuation has been done properly.”

The aim is to further develop the M&A portal to complete the client journey from opportunity to valuation, transaction and due diligence. This will help member firms provide more expertise in specialist areas by working alongside other firms within the Alliance.

For further details on how to access the M&A platform please contact website@praxity.com

On behalf of Praxity by Ian Lavis thewritingroom