M&A for SMEs

About Finalta

Finalta provides advice and solutions to enterprises for their financial management. This includes a comprehensive range of services for SMEs, such as setting up business structure, account management, part time financial management and transfer projects.

What are the real challenges during the SME transfer process?

JV : Once the owner of a small or medium-sized enterprise (SME) has decided to look for a buyer, often because of retirement or to prepare for a changeover, many problems arise. Firstly, it’s rarely possible to put the business on the market publically. In reality, it’s important to keep the process confidential to avoid any stress for staff, clients and other stakeholders. Secondly, in the majority of cases, the owner will experience strong emotions. Being intimately familiar with the market and the competition, the owner often finds it difficult to imagine the business in new hands. Lastly, the owner is letting go of their life’s work, and hopes that the fruit of all that effort continues into the future.

So when identifying potential buyers, it’s important that it’s done in a targeted and discrete manner, while at the same time being systematic.

How does business-monitor.ch help you in this task?

JV : business-monitor.ch helps us with several aspects of this process. The keyword search gives us a broader search compared to other systems which are mainly based on “NOGA” codes (Swiss General classification of economic activities). Effectively, this enables us to identify businesses on the same value chain of the client, by targeting the search to a specific domain. Furthermore, this system lets us search businesses based in German speaking Switzerland while using French search terms. This is a very useful option for us, because the acquisition of SMEs in French-speaking Switzerland by businesses from across the Sarine often makes a lot of sense.

Finally, being able to expand the search beyond the scope familiar to the owner helps us alleviate the emotional issues which are often at the root of transfer problems. Discussions with the client become much more rational.

Would you recommend business-monitor.ch?

JV : Yes, certainly. The transfer of businesses is a major issue in Switzerland as SMEs provide around two thirds of jobs. By helping them through the changeover, we are helping to keep jobs, and I think that a tool like business-monitor.ch brings real added value and quickly becomes indispensable.