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What we do

Outcome-orientated advice from the objective through strategy, documents, and post-signing growth

Selling, buying, raising or changing ownership? We start with the result you need, then bring the financial, legal and strategic work together to deliver it. The same senior team stays with you from the first decision through completion and the stages that follow.

Start where you are

The deal lifecycle

Six stages, with legal and corporate finance run by one team.

Usually two advisers join part way through and stop at completion. We are there from start to finish.

Before

Through

After

Origination

Preparation

Process

Negotiation

Completion

Integration

Corporate finance housebriefed separately, from Preparation to Completion.

Law firmbriefed separately, from Negotiation to Completion.

ONlegal and corporate finance, one team, from Origination onwards.

A hand-off between the finance adviser and the lawyers, which you pay for.

Where most engagements end.

Where the deal is earned. We stay.

  1. Origination

    Preparation, structuring, strategy and the story the market will hear.

    You end up with

    • Preparation, structuring and the story the market will hear
    • A buyer and investor list built with you
    • A senior adviser on the engagement for messaging, tactics and who says what

  2. Preparation

    Housekeeping, a diligence rehearsal and the materials.

    You end up with

    • An information memorandum and financial model
    • A data room, and the problems found before a buyer finds them
    • Corporate housekeeping done, not deferred

  3. Process

    Tactics, messaging, and the competitive tension that lifts offers.

    You end up with

    • Tactics, approach and messaging worked out together, and you make the approach
    • Offers compared on more than headline price
    • A recommendation, with the reasoning shown

  4. Negotiation

    Heads of terms through to final documents.

    You end up with

    • Competitive tension held, to improve the offers on the table
    • Heads of terms first, with the price structured so as much of it as possible is achievable
    • The documents drafted by us, or run alongside your own legal advisers

  5. Completion

    Signing, funds flow and what gets announced.

    You end up with

    • A calm head as the pressure ramps up, from people who have done this before
    • The things that surface late handled, and a commercial relationship that outlasts the signing
    • Help to take the hard decision and walk away, if that is the right answer

  6. Integration

    Where most engagements end. Ours carries on.

    You end up with

    • An integration plan built with your team, running from day one
    • Team engagement, people strategy and the change communications
    • Us, still here for the growth that follows
The usual shape of an engagement.

Legal and corporate finance run together at every stage, as one engagement.

What we actually do

Most transactions are won or lost before the documents are drafted.

We have lived every side of the table: as operators, as general counsel, as chief executives and as investors. On most mandates the documents come last. The modelling, the planning and the investor work come first, and they decide whether there is a deal to document at all.

Financial modelling

Three-statement models built from the operating detail rather than a template, so they hold up when someone pulls on them.
Scenario modellingSensitivitiesFunding runwayCap table and dilution

Business planning

We write the plan from the model and update it whenever the numbers change.
Business plan creationSite analysisOperating modelUnit economics

Early-stage fundraising

The model, the plan, the investor materials and the process, for founders raising for the first time. We run it from start to finish. More on early-stage fundraising
Investor materialsTarget listsInvestor processRound structuring

Structuring

We settle the structure before anyone drafts it, because it decides what the business can do at the next stage.
Holding structuresShare classesOption poolsFounder and investor terms

Events and campaigns

Delivered by ON Events, the ON Group's own events and campaigns team, not referred out. Launches, campaigns and the commercial resourcing a raise needs while it is running. About ON Events
Event managementCampaign deliveryLaunchesInterim resource
One strand of six

Legal

Legal is one part of the work. It is drafted by the same people who built the model and ran the process.
Shareholder agreementsCorporate documentsCommercial contractsGovernance

From a blank page to the closing documents, on one mandate with one team.

How we charge

Pay for our time, or pay for the result.

How each way of paying works.

HourlyRetainerSuccess fee
You pay forAdvice when you need it, at our standard rates.Time booked in advance, at a discount.A fee tied to the outcome.
Worth knowingPartner rates are less than half those of a City firm.Extra hours stay at the retainer rate until the work becomes a project of its own.Used where it suits both of us to share in the result.
Fees are agreed for each piece of work.

Before it gets complicated

Call us before, not after.

Most people find us when they are already in the middle of it, and tell us they wish they had called sooner. Three separate advisers, doing it yourself and then unpicking it, and calling late all cost more than our fee, and the value impact is not delivered. The work does not end at signing, and neither do we.

  • ON from the start One senior team, from the idea to well after completion.
  • Three separate advisers Three fees, and the gaps between them that nobody owns.
  • Do it yourself, then unwind Cheap until the deal. Fixing it afterwards costs more than setting it up properly would have.
Tell us where you are

Three routes, one destination

Three ways to get there.

COSTTIMEsigningWhere you areThe dealWhere you are goingYou

Three ways from where you are to where you are going, against cost and time. ON from the start is the one line that carries on past signing.

Tell us where you are trying to get to.

A principal replies. The earlier the call, the more we can add. The first conversation costs nothing.