European Tech company sellers MUST look internationally
To start off, you need to know that as a seller of a tech company in Europe, the likelihood of your company being acquired by a buyer from outside your country is immense. In fact, the odds are 62% your buyer will not be local. In some smaller countries, this approaches 90%.
If you are going to sell your company, you need to run a global process as otherwise you are guaranteed to leave money on the table. And, you should do so with an advisor that has international presence. More importantly, your advisor must have strong relationships with tech buyers. Relationships are built and reinforced by educating these buyers and providing them with research as well as creating peer to peer networking opportunities on a never-ending basis. Then reinforce all this by executing hundreds of transactions in your industry.
British, Irish and Israeli sellers are very likely to find their international buyer in the US, as this is the case over two-thirds of the time. For the rest of Europe, US buyers are also critical, accounting for over 50% of these transactions. And when you think US, you need to think further than Silicon Valley as three-quarters of the time, your buyer is not going to be in California ;-)
Posted by MiroParizek, Managing Director on 16 February 2012
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