Selling Your Business?
Know What It’s Worth First.
Most UK business owners spend years painstakingly building a business and only weeks negotiating its sale. The final number they accept is rarely a true reflection of what the business is genuinely worth — it is a reflection of how well the buyer negotiated and how little the seller knew going in.
An independent, ICAEW-grade corporate finance valuation before you officially sell changes that. You will firmly know what your Enterprise Value is, what is driving the number, and what you will and will not accept — before any buyer sees your numbers or conducts due diligence.
Chartered Accountant
Typical UK SME EBITDA Multiple
Starting Fee — Fixed & Agreed Upfront
Why Every Business Owner Needs a Valuation Before Selling
Why Every Business Owner Needs a Valuation Before Selling
When you physically sell a business, you are making the most significant financial transaction of your life. The outcome — the actual cash proceeds in your bank account — depends heavily on two things: the inherent quality of the business and the strength of your negotiating position. The first is what it is. The second is entirely within your control.
A professionally prepared, signed corporate finance valuation from an ICAEW Chartered Accountant hands you that negotiating position. It is a robust document you can confidently put in front of a buyer’s M&A advisers, a corporate finance firm, or a private equity team and declare: this is what the business is worth, and this is explicitly why. Without it, you are dangerously relying on goodwill, pure instinct, or a business broker’s informal estimate — none of which will hold up when a buyer’s forensic due diligence team starts asking hard questions.
The Five M&A Mistakes Sellers Make Without an Independent Valuation
01. Accepting the buyer’s first anchor number
The first offer from a strategic trade buyer is almost always a calculated test. Without a rigorously documented valuation to anchor the discussion, many sellers passively accept it or negotiate weakly. A signed M&A report completely changes the conversation.
02. Relying heavily on a broker’s guide price
A broker’s initial guide price is simply a marketing figure. It is not a professional corporate finance valuation, it is not signed off, and it absolutely will not survive intense scrutiny from the buyer’s legal advisers during due diligence.
03. Not fully understanding normalised EBITDA
A buyer’s M&A team will mercilessly adjust your reported profit to safely remove one-off items, above-market owner salaries, and non-recurring revenue. If you have not professionally done this yourself, their harsh adjustments will define the earnings baseline — and therefore suppress the price.
04. Confusing Enterprise Value with Equity Value
The headline deal price is an Enterprise Value. What you actually cleanly receive — the Equity Value — depends strictly on net debt, working capital adjustments, and the completion accounts process. Sellers who do not intimately understand this bridge are routinely shocked by the final proceeds figure.
05. Entering the process too late to safely improve the multiple
The key factors that securely drive the EBITDA multiple — recurring revenue, management depth, customer diversity — naturally take time to build. A diagnostic valuation commissioned 18–36 months before a final exit gives you the critical runway to act on the strategic findings.
What an Independent M&A Valuation for Sale Includes
Normalised EBITDA analysis
We forensically reconstruct your EBITDA from three years of audited accounts and management information, making all appropriate adjustments for owner remuneration, one-off sunk costs, and non-recurring items. The end result is a brilliantly clean, defensible earnings figure that exactly represents the true, recurring commercial profit of the business.
Sector multiple benchmarking
We accurately apply current M&A transaction multiples from your exact sector — drawn reliably from UK and European M&A deal databases — to identify the realistic range at which your business would practically sell. We explain precisely what operational metrics are driving your position within that range and what would be required to rapidly improve it.
Enterprise Value and Equity bridge
We explicitly calculate both the gross Enterprise Value and the resulting Equity Value, modelling the precise impact of your balance sheet on actual financial proceeds. This entirely prevents the tragically common situation where a seller blindly agrees a headline price and is then severely surprised by what lands in their bank account after completion accounts adjustments.
Risk assessment and value driver analysis
We meticulously document the core factors in your business that a buyer’s due diligence team will aggressively focus on — customer concentration, owner dependency, margin quality, recurring revenue ratios, and management capability. Understanding these critical points before a strategic buyer does allows you to address the most significant ones before they become lethal negotiating points against you.
Signed professional report
Every single valuation is personally prepared and signed by Kishen Patel ACA, an ICAEW Chartered Accountant. The corporate finance report is produced to the exact high standard expected by sophisticated buyers, their legal advisers, and private equity firms. You can verify the ICAEW membership directly on the ICAEW member directory.
Who This Service Is For
- Owner-managed SMEs actively considering a sale or M&A exit in the next 6 to 36 months.
- Founders who have unexpectedly received an unsolicited approach and strictly want to know if it is fair.
- Business owners currently in a structured sale process who urgently need an independent valuation for immediate negotiation.
- Partners or shareholders who bitterly disagree on the value of the business and need an objective, third-party opinion.
- SME owners who deeply want to understand what their business is worth before officially appointing a broker or M&A adviser.
Fixed Fee. No Surprises.
Every business valuation is priced on a strict fixed-fee basis, explicitly agreed in writing before any corporate finance work ever begins. Fees start from £2,500 plus VAT for straightforward SMEs and are comprehensively agreed based on the exact size and balance sheet complexity of the assignment. There are absolutely no hourly rates, no scope creep charges, and no shock bill at the end that was not firmly agreed upfront.
Independent. Qualified. Accountable.
Why ICAEW qualifications matter when selling your business
The prestigious letters ACA after a valuer’s name are not merely a badge — they are an uncompromising standard. ICAEW Chartered Accountants are rigidly bound by strict professional ethics, continuing education requirements, and intense regulatory oversight. When an ICAEW member signs a valuation report, they are putting their professional registration entirely on the line.
Regulated by ICAEW
Our valuations are flawlessly prepared by an ICAEW-regulated Chartered Accountant. This ensures bulletproof professional indemnity, ethical standards, and accountability — not just a random number printed on a page.
Big Four-trained methodology
Our core approach to normalised EBITDA, multiple selection, and M&A risk analysis directly reflects the exact methodology used in institutional M&A — applied efficiently at an SME fee level.
Personally signed
Every report is meticulously prepared and personally signed by Kishen Patel ACA. Not an automated template. Not blindly delegated. Your report is done entirely by the same expert adviser you spoke to at the start.
Defensible under intense scrutiny
Our valuations are rigorously prepared to withstand hostile challenge from a buyer’s corporate finance team, HMRC, or a UK court. The methodology is fully documented, the assumptions are transparent, and the conclusion is firmly supported.
Common Questions
Selling Your Business FAQs
Before You Sell
Know your number.
Negotiate from strength.
No obligation. Fixed fees from £2,500. ICAEW Chartered Accountant. Response within one business day.