Strategic Pre-Sale Advisory
“A long-term relationship approach to driving value on the sale of your business.”
30+
Years M&A experience
100+
Transactions advised
Flexible
engagement model
— Advice
Garthway Advisory provides strategic advice to private businesses to help prepare them ahead of a sale, exit or investment.
Too many deals that start, fail to complete.
Garthway Advisory helps prepare private businesses ahead of a sale or investment event, such that when the M&A process actually starts, the business, its shareholders and management team are fully prepared. This reduces process failure rates and will increase the valuation or the terms achieved.
There is a fundamental difference between having a good business and having a good business ready for sale. Garthway Advisory’s approach focuses on three areas which owners should address well in advance of appointing their M&A advisers.
i. Being fully prepared or “match-fit”
Ensuring the business, its owners and management team are ready to engage with the M&A process – this can range from people, to systems, to structuring.
ii. Optimising the equity story
Challenging, developing and validating your growth story through the lens of buyers and investors to maximise your exit multiple.
iii. Aligning with buyers and investors
Identifying some potential key buyers or investors and building early relationships with them well before any process starts
“If only I had changed X or Y or developed Z in the years before the process, it would have resulted in a much better outcome, or it would have prevented a failed process.”
— A perspective shared by too many business owners, too late
— Approach
Long-term. Relationship-driven. Genuinely independent.
Every situation is different and the advice you receive will be tailored to that.
Garthway Advisory works as a retained board adviser, providing strategic advice, along with industry insight and network access. This is a genuine partnership with a single mantra – using our lived experience to help you achieve what you deserve.
The commitment to you
There is a fundamental difference between having a good business and having a good business ready for sale.
The commitment is to help close that gap with our practical, lived experience from 30+ years of advisory situations – so that when you engage with M&A advisers and that the formal process starts, you are ready to achieve the best possible outcome.
“Doing deals is getting harder – being better prepared is the antidote…” McKinsey’s 2026 Global Private Markets Report concluded: a tougher private deal market, fewer deals completing, easy deal levers gone and more businesses staying unsold for longer.
— Experience
Henry Wells
Founder, Garthway Advisory
Over 30 years of advisory experience, focused on advising owners, founders, boards and management teams across a wide range of corporate finance transactions.
Prior to founding Garthway Advisory, most recently Head of Consumer at Cavendish; previously Head of UK M&A at Duff & Phelps (now Kroll) and Head of Leisure & Retail at Close Brothers Corporate Finance (now DC Advisory). Qualified solicitor at Eversheds LLP, London. Graduate of the University of Newcastle upon Tyne.
— Working With You
Is your business ready?
Our job is to help you be ready for when you appoint your suite of advisers to execute your transaction and this generally falls into the following four parts:
Being fully prepared or “match-fit”
A sale or investment transaction is a long and tough process – all on top of the day-to-day and it can put significant strain on the business and the management team. Private businesses are also getting harder to sell, so the level of preparation needs to be greater. The areas Garthway Advisory advises on includes: seller mindset and approach; business or people changes; valuation expectations, review of systems, margins, KPIs and growth trajectories.
Optimising the growth and equity story
Have you really challenged your equity story and positioning? Have you looked at through the lens of a buyer or an investor and articulated how it drives future growth and maximises the sale multiple? This is not something to be done in a darkened room over an intense short period at the start of a sales process. It needs to develop, mature and evolve over time. Our experience allows us to provide genuine advice, support and challenge to your business in the development of your equity story.
Ensuring the best fit with buyers and investors
Who is going to buy or invest in your business? Assessing this early is critical. Your equity story needs to speak to them and your business needs to relate to theirs – building this relationship may take time ahead of a process and needs to be nurtured and worked at. That is where Garthway Advisory is at its best.
Appointing your M&A adviser
Appointing the right M&A adviser to run your process is a very important decision. Garthway Advisory will guide you through the pitch process, help you ask the right questions and agree on scope and terms – so you appoint the team that is truly right for your situation. Once appointed, we remain as an independent board resource throughout the process.
— Working With You
Doing deals is getting harder. Being better prepared is the antidote.
It is not the day-to-day job of business owners or board directors to think about these matters, and when they do arise, they naturally get put off until “another day”. Part of Garthway’s role is to ensure the pre-sale advisory workstream keeps moving with the right cadence and gets the right level of focus.
Do you think you are ready?
If you have never sold a business before, let’s discuss the things you should really be focused on. If you have done this many times, you will know that every process is different, so we can discuss what you need to be doing ahead of your next transaction.
Planning – the right cadence matters
Pre-sale advisory is a lower-intensity project than M&A, but it needs to be done little and often. Strategic input should be developed and enacted over the right period of time.
Don’t be the business whose process fails
As completing transactions grows harder, the well prepared businesses will differentiate and stand out. This takes time and planning before your M&A adviser is engaged.
— Contact Us
Start the discussion.
- Are you considering a sale, an exit or an investment?
- If so, do you think that you are ready?
- Please contact us to have a discussion and we can talk through where and how we may be able to help.
- All enquiries are treated in complete confidence.
Based In
United Kingdom
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