Buyer's Market

One banker's unofficial perspective; Leverage is more important now than ever in acquisitions. You might catch the one off seller who panics and sells below value but my guess would be that business had other issues they were trying to minimize or sell before they came to the surface. Stick to your fundamentals. High leverage, tight cash flow deals dependent on heavy addbacks were always risky. Good companies with strong fundamentals and good staff/customer bases should rebound (assuming things play out well in the next###-###-#### days). I have yet to hear about any pullbacks in lending but that could occur if this keeps going for awhile. It would be naïve to think this won't have a big impact on every sector in the next several months. Supply chain will likely be an issue and the service sector will likely feel that at some point based on at least a short term basis. Our capital market team puts out a newsletter every couple of months. I imagine the next one will be a good read. If you would like to be added to the distribution list just email me. --@----.com

Businesses looking to sell now might be doing so under 'fire sale' conditions if only one month of slowdown is enough to get them to sell. I would look very closely at fundamentals of the business before jumping in.