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Onyx Integrated Services Program
Onyx's mission is to provide smaller companies with the coordinated M&A service levels expected of big-company Investment Bankers. We do this though our Integrated Services Program.
We recognize that most business owners don't maintain relationships with the full spectrum of professional M&A advisors typically needed to effect a successful transaction. To save clients much time and effort in finding, screening and driving these professionals, each Onyx Associate is chartered to identify the best "team" fitting a particular assignment, then to integrate and manage the team throughout an M&A cycle.
To facilitate this, Onyx maintains a growing network of Affiliate Professionals, who stand ready to assist you as accomplished specialists in their own right. They are also selected for their abilities to be team players, with the common aim of planning, building and completing a deal on your behalf. Or, should you wish to use your own trusted professionals, we will of course work closely with them to minimize the time and effort you need to take to coordinate the entire transaction cycle.
Onyx will provide directly, or integrate and manage, all of the following services on your behalf:
- Assessment: Review and analysis of your personal goals, potential exit strategies, and options, all against the backdrop of your company status and plans.
- Intermediary: Completion of a full campaign of marketing, selling and deal-making for you and your company
- Business Valuation: Determination of the current value of the company, or projecting a required value to achieve your goals
- Legal: Provision of advice and / or execution of a transaction's legal issues and drafting of formal contract documents
- Capital Sourcing: Comprehensive search for Capital through Affiliates and Industry sources, to facilitate recapitalization, expansion plans or other growth needs
- Taxation Advice: Exploration of post-transaction liabilities as an aid to deal structure and personal planning.
- Integration Advice: Assessment of critical success factors in the period immediately following a merger or acquisition, including integration of redundant teams, and key employee retention programs.
- Management Package: Exploration of issues surrounding ongoing compensation for owners as retained executives in the new entity, including "earn-outs" and other incentive components
- Investor/buyer sourcing from thousands of pre-qualified candidates in our own and other industry databases.
- Asset Divestitures for Corporations or Investor funds
Onyx Core Values
Confidentiality
- It's critical for an M&A partner to sustain extreme care when dealing with confidential and/or sensitive information at all stages of a relationship with a client. Onyx not only commits to this, but reinforces it by ensuring that all information about a client, all potential investor/buyer targets, and any negotiation strategies are first approved by the client. We sign Non-Disclosure agreements early in our discussions, and require any third-parties involved to sign them also.
Selectivity
- We accept only a small number of assignments every year - from clients whom we believe ultimately have a strong likelihood of a successful sale. Also, we only accept assignments after we've agreed with you on a realistic valuation of your business. Subsequently we are totally committed to achieving closure of each transaction.
Seniority
- We dedicate only senior professionals to develop and manage a client's full M&A transaction cycle. We never use junior staff to manage deals.
Business Insight & Experience
- To conduct its M&A services, Onyx only recruits Associates who are themselves accomplished businessmen or women. Only through such experience, plus a talent for marketing, selling and deal-making can we effectively understand and promote a client's essence to others. Onyx prides itself on representing our clients accurately using real operating knowledge, not just through reiteration of a marketing brochure.
Fair, Honest Fee Structure
- Onyx typically earns over 90% of its fees from the completion of a successful transaction - not before. And any other services incurred during the transaction, such as a detailed Business Valuation, are built with each client's specific requirements in mind, justified and agreed ahead of time, and become due only on completion of the service.
Ethical M&A Practices
There are many firms in the M&A market, some with unprofessional practices or with a different agenda to most clients. In this context we feel it's important to state that Onyx specifically does NOT:
- Employ mass-marketing tactics to sell Valuation or "Business Audit" seminars as a standalone profitable business. We prefer to conduct individual, private consultations that can be tailored to the client's requirements.
- Inflate the valuation of a business in order to get an assignment. In fact we don't accept assignments until we've agreed on a realistic business valuation with you. This avoids mis-set expectations and promotes common goals during the transaction process.
- Charge large upfront fees for "marketing packages". Onyx marketing fees are designed to cover our costs only, and paid by the client only upon completion, reflecting our belief that marketing effort is an integral part of the M&A process, not a profit center. We make our money in completing M&A transactions, period.
Fees
Onyx Associates' fees are based on time-honored practices and formulae, and are always intended to be fair reward for first class service. Furthermore the fees are not charged upfront, but only after completion of an agreed set of deliverables.
Categories of fees:
- Completion Fees:
These form over 90% of Onyx's total income. They're earned and paid contingent on the successful conclusion of an assignment - i.e. only after a deal closes.
Completion Fees are structured on an individual basis for each assignment, but are based on a sliding scale modeled on the well-known Lehman formula.
- Marketing Fees:
Typically Onyx produces a detailed set of marketing materials before bringing a company offering to market. These include a Business Profile, an Offering Prospectus, and Advertising summaries. In addition we plan and complete a full marketing campaign lasting typically several months to reach investor/buyers, qualify them and bring them to the negotiating table with you. However, unlike many M&A specialists, Onyx marketing fees are designed to cover our costs only, and paid by the client only upon completion, reflecting our belief that marketing effort is an integral part of the M&A process, not a profit center.
- In-Depth Valuation Fees:
Before accepting an assignment Onyx completes a preliminary Valuation of a company, free of charge. Some clients prefer to go beyond this preliminary valuation. In these cases Onyx provides a full Valuation report, usually through an Affiliate. Here again, clients pay the Valuation fee only when the report is published, not before.
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