Sell-Side IB Buyers' List

Hey Everyone,

I recently started at an Boutique Bank that caters to lower and middle market companies. I am currently doing mostly sell-side Investment Banking work. One of my tasks during my first week was to put together a list of potential buyers - both financial and strategic.

I was asked to collect about at least 50 buyers. My Associate had advised me to use Google and Capital IQ to screen for buyers - which I did. However, I noticed that this is a very inefficient process as it requires a tremendous amount of time.

Since these are lower middle market companies (think EBITDA 20mm), I often times need to include smaller private companies/competitor found through Google since there is a lower chance of interest from large firms.

Is there a "industry standard" or "best practices" when screening for buyers? Maybe I am still slow at doing it since this is my 1st week at the job.

Thanks for your inputs.

4 Comments
 

Probably no short cut for identifying the likely strategic buyers. But two things are odd here: - you seem to be ruling out large cap buyers of this asset you're selling, when in fact strategic acquisitions involving a large acquiror and a small target are more the rule than the exception. so you should absolutely have big companies on your list, assuming there is strategic fit - something is strange if your firm has zero institutional knowledge of financial buyers, and you are putting that list together from scratch.

 
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