Mergers & Acquisitions
Buy-side advisory, weighted to operating risk
Financial diligence asks whether the numbers are true. We ask whether they will still be true without the current owner.
In short
Keel Partners supports lower mid-market acquirers with a written investment thesis, screened origination, and commercial diligence focused on operating risk: customer concentration, contract quality, pricing power, cost to serve and key-person dependency. We write the 100-day plan before close and chair the integration cadence after it. We are not licensed transaction intermediaries and do not act as one.
Commercial diligence
What we look at that a financial DD will not
Key-person dependency
Which relationships, decisions and know-how leave with the owner, and what it costs to replace them.
Customer concentration
Not just the top-five percentage — the contract terms, the renewal history and who at the customer actually decides.
Pricing power
Whether price has ever been raised, what happened, and whether the margin is structural or historical.
Real cost to serve
By customer and by product, including the work absorbed informally by people who will not stay.
Operating fragility
Single points of failure in process, supply and systems that never appear in a data room.
People and cadence
Whether there is a management layer, or one person and eleven direct reports.
Method
How a buy-side mandate runs
Thesis
Three lines on what you are buying and why it is worth more to you than to anyone else.
Screen and prioritise
A target list with an approach argument for each, ranked against the thesis rather than availability.
Approach and early read
Structured conversations that establish fit before either side spends money.
Commercial diligence
Operating risk, in parallel with financial and legal diligence run by your other advisers.
Structure support
Earn-outs, retention and warranty positions viewed from an operating standpoint.
100-day plan
Written before signing. Named owners, weekly milestones, decided to the week for the first thirty days.
FAQ
Frequently asked
Are you a licensed transaction intermediary?
No. We provide commercial and operational advisory inside a deal team. Any licensed intermediation is performed by a licensed party, named in writing before the mandate starts.
How are you paid?
Retainer plus success fee, disclosed in full at mandate. We avoid pure success-fee structures because they quietly bias an adviser toward any deal rather than the right one.
Will you tell us to walk away?
Regularly, and it is the most valuable thing we do. An operator recognises the businesses that only work while the current owner is in the building.
Do you cover end-of-service gratuity in diligence?
Always, in GCC targets. Accrued gratuity is a funded liability and it is the most common surprise for European buyers.
Next step
Book a 30-minute briefing
No deck, no pitch. Bring one decision you are stuck on and we will work it through.