Fundraising and M&A
Overview
The Fundraising and M&A competency covers five key skills: Identify and Evaluate Opportunities, Perform Valuations, Fundraising, Making Acquisitions, and Exit Readiness.
Identify and Evaluate Opportunities
To help make the best decision for your company, finance leaders need to be involved in the process of identifying and evaluating potential opportunities. This can be a daunting task, but with the right tools and resources, you can support your leadership by playing a key role in the decision-making process.
Perform Valuations
Finance leaders often need to determine the total value of your business, for example during a fundraising or shareholder exit event. When it comes to valuing a company, this can be tricky and there is no one-size-fits-all approach.
Fundraising
The finance leader plays a critical role in leading the fundraising process for a company. You are responsible for determining how much to raise, identifying appropriate sources of funding at each stage of your business life cycle, and providing accurate financial information to potential investors.
Making Acquisitions
Acquiring another company has the potential to significantly benefit your business and fast track the delivery of your business plan. However, acquisitions can be tricky, and the deal process may be complex. There are many factors to consider, and the role of the CFO is critical in ensuring a successful transaction.
Exit Readiness
There are many different types of exit deals including trade sales and private equity buyouts. Companies need to start planning well in advance of any targeted exit date and should always be ready for an unexpected lucrative approach from a potential buyer.
Each of these requirements are essential components of your CFO role and must be implemented effectively.
Fundraising and M&A Criteria
Assess your competency across the five Fundraising and M&A skills with the Ratings Guide below.
| Skill | 1. Basic Level | 2. Intermediate | 3. Advanced |
|---|---|---|---|
| Identify and evaluate opportunities
Work with your management team to develop your fundraising and M&A strategy, understand the components of value creation, identify opportunities, create investment cases, determine returns on investment and de-risk your activities. | Contributes towards the fundraising and M&A strategy, models the financial impact of such activity and considers the likely feasibility of each potential deal scenario. | Performs desktop research on fundraising and M&A targets. Evaluates the pros and cons of each opportunity. Builds relationships with investors or targets. Supports decision-making to determine your company's preferred option. | Participates in board discussions regarding fundraising and M&A strategies. Influences decisions and challenges views. Works with third parties to identify likely opportunities, leads the evaluation of each option and presents recommendations to the board based upon research findings. |
| Perform valuations
Build valuation models using a range of approaches to determine valuation ranges, returns on investments, impact on financial model and value for money. | Possesses a basic understanding of different ways to value a company or individual asset and has some experience of performing such valuations. | Has reasonable experience of performing valuations across various methodologies. Possesses a basic understanding of the assumptions and limitations involved within each approach. | Fully understands the range of methodologies used to perform valuations and has strong experience of implementing them. Quantifies valuation ranges based upon the outputs of each methodology. Feels confident describing the pros and cons of each approach. Creates compelling arguments towards determining a final valuation figure. |
| Fundraising
Lead fundraising rounds, negotiate terms, coordinate advisors, manage stakeholders and complete deals. | Helps to deliver various elements of a fundraising transaction within a clearly defined team role. | Plays a key role in delivering fundraising transactions through the entire deal process and possesses a strong understanding of different available sources of finance, term sheets, legal agreements and deal mechanisms. | Takes responsibility for leading a fundraising round from initial conception through to receiving the funds. This includes determining the fundraising requirements, considering available funding options, creating the investor deck, presenting to investors, leading due diligence processes, negotiating deal terms and completing the transaction. |
| Making acquisitions
Perform a key role in acquiring companies and assets, lead the deal process, work with advisors and integrate acquisitions. | Helps to deliver specific components of a buy-side acquisition within a clearly defined team role. | Plays a key role in performing buy-side company due diligence on an acquisition target, participates in counter-party conversations and liaises with third party advisors during an acquisition deal process. | Takes responsibility for leading an acquisition process from initial conception through to receiving the funds. This includes meeting with the target representatives, negotiating the deal terms, creating the term sheets, appointing advisors, performing due diligence on the target company, raising the required capital, finalising the legal agreements, completing the transaction and successfully integrating the acquisition. |
| Exit readiness
Implement the necessary actions to prepare your business for an exit and play a key role in the sales process. | Contributes towards specific components of an exit readiness plan within a clearly defined team role. | Plays a lead role in delivering key components of an exit readiness plan and significantly contributes towards getting the company ready for a deal, responding to requests for information and delivering the deal process. | Creates a long-term exit readiness plan to deliver the shareholders' strategic objectives. Plays a key role in delivering the plan, including getting the company ready for an exit, generating interest in the business, negotiating key terms, creating the deal timetable, implementing the deal process, maximising shareholder value and delivering a successful exit. |
Assess and Develop Your CFO Competencies
Explore the rest of The GrowCFO Competency Framework and take advantage of the following resources to assess and develop your strengths and skills gaps.
- The GrowCFO Competency Framework Home
- Download detailed competency ratings guide PDF
- Complete your GrowCFO Competency Framework and receive a free benchmarking report (included in GrowCFO free membership)
- Take the Fundraising and M&A online course (GrowCFO premium membership)
- Attend competency workshop events (GrowCFO premium membership)
- Complete the GrowCFO Fundraising Simulator
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