You’ve got a buyer. Don’t let the deal leak.

No. The work required depends on where the transaction has reached and what is creating difficulty. A focused intervention can be useful without restarting the entire process.

In our experience, a professional sell-side adviser can make a transaction easier to manage by improving information flow, coordination and decision-making. The important point is to understand the situation before deciding how to intervene.

Buyers often welcome the appointment of an experienced sell-side adviser.

Not necessarily. Deal Support is designed around the live problem. We can scope a distinct piece of work where that is the right answer to unlock the deal for you.

The seller's. Initium is a sell-side corporate finance adviser.

That is a sensible place to start. Explain where the transaction is and what is concerning you; we can tell you whether we believe we can help.

Two reasons. You are likely to stay involved with the acquirer for a year or two after completion, and that relationship is easier to keep if you were not the lead negotiator. And the documentation is detailed, so it helps to have someone who knows which clauses are standard.

Once you commit to one buyer you no longer have a field of choice, and both sides have to make it work. Demands, misunderstandings and miscommunication follow, which is when someone in the middle keeping both sides moving earns their keep.

Emotion leaks in both directions, from celebrating a strong bid to losing patience with the same question asked again. Someone who has done this hundreds of times can tell you what is normal, and that is often the difference between a deal completing and one that falls over.

It depends where in the cycle we join. On a deal that is already agreed, we start with three things: whether the acquirer is credible and can fund the purchase without having to raise the money, how the offer is structured and not just what the headline number says, and whether there are other buyers who ought to be in the mix.

Three signs. Things are changing: the deal you agreed is starting to erode and the buyer keeps moving the goalposts. Things are challenging: an insatiable appetite for information that you cannot feed while also running the business. Or the deal is choking: deadlines missed, momentum gone, and nobody obviously driving it.

The useful question is which worry. That it is taking too long and targets keep slipping. That you still do not know how they intend to fund the purchase. Or that you are one of several deals they have running, and may never be the one they complete.

A conversation will tell you whether there is a deal here, whether you need to find another buyer, or whether to put it to one side and get the distraction away from running your business.

If the deal has stalled, or the buyer has started talking about renegotiating terms, it is worth turning the question round and running a reverse due diligence on them. Financial strength, latest filings, debt against profit, whether they are struggling.

We have moved clients from one buyer to another on exactly that basis. Nothing was wrong with the business and it was sailing through due diligence, but the buyer could not raise the debt they needed and started renegotiating to cover their own problem rather than yours.

Transparency matters, but so does context. Before anything goes across, it is worth asking why they have asked, what they are trying to understand, and what they will ask next once they have the answer.

This is not about withholding anything. A customer concentration schedule on its own can raise more questions than it answers. The same schedule alongside the history of the relationship, the contract terms, the renewal profile and what you are doing to diversify tells a clearer and more accurate story. Consistency matters too: the financials, the management presentation and every answer in due diligence need to line up, because a small inconsistency creates doubt where a well-managed response builds confidence.