Alex Azcona, Founding Partner at IMAP Albia Capital
The founders of IMAP Albia Capital have spent over 18 year advising clients in corporate transactions and closed more than 150 deals during that time. Throuhout the years, just like in other technical or financial fields, there has been a significat evolution and the parameters that clients value in the corporate consulting services for the acquisition, sale and integration of companies have varied.
In the early days, business owners and companies primarily sought out corporate finance advisors for the technical skills of the team and the entity that would provide the service. They valued the number of transactions carried out by the consulting firm, the success rate of its team members, the knowledge of the procedure for buying or selling a company, the technical, financial and valuation skills, and the negotiation skills and knowledge in terms of sale contracts and shareholder agreements.
As we move ahead into the second decade of the 21 st century, all of the parameters previously used to select an advisor are now considered standard aspects. Although the levels of knowledge vary between businesses and teams, the market presumes that M&A consulting firms are familiar with financial and valuation techniques, understand the procedure and have a reasonable success ratio. Those of us with many years of industry experience are fully aware that this is not exactly the case, but the market interprets it as such to date.
As in all economic and social fields, the speed at which solutions are found is currently appreciated the most. Future generations are accustomed to having everything right away, and this trend also applies to M&As.
The atributes that are currently valued the most in sales pitches for being awarded a contract, even more than the cost of the service are those related to finding the solution to the issue being addressed from the onset. This requires being familiar with the sectors, companies, and active and passive agents of an industry when preparing a collaboration agreement proposal, and all of this whithin a global perspective. It is not enough to know the sector and local or domestic companies; the vision, identification of trends and agents must be worldwide.
IMAP has spent years working with groups of professionals specialized by sectors, so when the possibility of partnering with a company arises, we have the materials, analysis and industry experts in multiple countries who are familiar with the latest trends on a technological, business and corporate level.
These spezialized groups meet periodically (usually every quarter) to share the industry trends in each of the groups´s member countries, the largest corporate transactions, the most active business groups in their sector on a global level, along with the trends, expected technological evolutions, corporate transactions carried out, and whenever posiible, the market multiples for that sector. Therse reports are made available to the entire organization as a source of key information along with the conversations between experts to complete the work in that sector.
These groups of industry experts, and new ones that are set up, provide IMAP Albia Capital with in-depth knowledge of how industries evolve globally from a business, technological and corporate perspective, allowing us to shape an opinion of the M&A transactions that could take place in each one in the future.