Mergers and Acquisitions as a Fast Track Route to International Expansion with Oliver Froment | Pro Capital #42

If you’re brave and bold, and want to expand to another country quickly and in a significant way, maybe the answer is to buy or merge with another company in that country. It could be a competitor, it could be complementary – but either way, if you’ve got the opportunity, there are lots of potential advantages.

For a start, you get an established company, with all the necessary infrastructure. In most cases, you’ll be able to change the name of the company you acquire to match your brand. You don’t have to find accountants, register with tax authorities, find and hire staff or find and lease offices. You don’t need to find customers – the company you’re acquiring will already have them. With the new company, you may get new products and services to add to your range. Managed well, you’ll also get synergy benefits by eliminating duplication in admin functions.

It can be a real fast track route to establishing your business in another country. That’s true regardless of the country, but perhaps it’s especially good if you want to gain a foothold in one of the more difficult ones, where bureaucracy rules, and the language barrier may be the least of your problems.

Even more important to my mind is the resulting increase in value of your company. Put simply, when it comes to sell up or float, a company with at least one overseas subsidiary is worth at least double that of one with the same revenues and profits that are just derived from one country, or that just exports from its home base without any overseas operations.

Obviously this isn’t for everyone. However, it’s not solely the preserve of big listed companies – small and medium companies can do M&A too.

In this podcast, I’m in conversation with another Oliver, Oliver Froment. With his team in Pro Capital, based in London, Oliver is dedicated to helping those smaller companies acquire or merge with suitable targets in other countries and, where necessary, get the financing they need to do that.

Oliver has been working in finance for a long time. He founded his company, Pro Capital Ltd, in 1993 after he’d already built up more than 10 years of extensive international financial and corporate experience.  The firm is FCA regulated, starting as a capital market firm transacting debt and equity-linked securities and investment and advisory services. More recently Oliver has focused on Mergers and Acquisitions and raising capital for companies, completing over 1000 transactions in 40 countries.

For more information and to get in touch with Oliver Froment:

Contact details and Links

Website: https://procapitaluk.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/oliver-froment-570926172/

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