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The record, rather than the recognition
An award is somebody else's opinion of a deal that already closed. It is worth less to you than the record underneath it, which you can check:
- 32 M&A transactions completed over 12 years, beginning in 2014.
- Nine of those completed in a three-year run between 2015 and 2017.
- Verdani Capital founded in 2018 as the buy-and-build platform.
- Five trading companies in the group today, and over £2M of annual portfolio profit.
- Three strategic exits completed in 2024.
- None of the businesses are run by me day to day, which is the point of the model.
What an award does not tell you
Any award in this field is a judgement on deals that completed. It says nothing about what happened to those businesses afterwards, and for anybody thinking about selling, afterwards is the whole question. Is the company still trading under its own name? Are the staff still there? Did the owner get the deferred part of their consideration, and did the earn-out targets turn out to be achievable in the real world?
Those are the questions worth asking of any buyer, and they are harder to answer than an awards entry. Ask me them directly and I will give you names and dates.
Buyer, not adviser
One correction to how this page originally read. I am not an M&A adviser and I do not act for clients on transactions. I buy companies with the group's own capital, take between 40% and 100%, keep the brand and the team, and hold them. There is no commission out of a seller's proceeds because there is no advisory relationship to charge for.
That distinction matters when you are deciding who to talk to. An adviser is paid to complete a transaction. A buyer has to live with the business afterwards.