The financials
You obtain and send the sets of financials and the forecast.
Senior finance and deal execution
Partner-level work. Without the partner-level hire.
Financial models, valuations, information memoranda, board packs and fractional CFO work. Directly for companies, or under your firm’s brand.
US$2.3bnLargest listed transaction
15Engagements · mining and resources
Northam PlatinumJSE · fairness opinion
Assore LimitedJSE · delisting
What comes back
Everything you need to use it.
The finished work, in the format you will actually use it in
Every figure traced to its source
Where a range needs your call, flagged and never quietly filled
A record of every judgement made and why
How I work
Different work. The same system.
Valuations, board packs, information memoranda, models, CFO work. How an engagement starts depends on who you are. It runs the same way from there.
- M&A and transactions
- Valuations
- Reports and board packs
- Financial modelling
- Due diligence and data rooms
- CFO advisory
Each of these is its own workflow, and every one runs the same way. How it starts depends on who you are.
Every engagement starts with a conversation. What you send me next is what differs.
If you are an advisory firmYou already have a house method. I learn it once, in two to three days, then execute it. What you can take on stops depending on who is free. Your brand, your voice, your templates.
If you are an accounting firmI work under your brand, on your clients. You introduce me and stay across it; I run the work.
If you are a companyThere is no house method to learn, so we start from your own numbers.
Who does what, when the client is yours
You give me
The mandate, the client context, your templates and the deadline. Under NDA, before I start.
I give you
A complete draft in your format, sourced line by line, with every open call flagged for you.
You keep
The client, the relationship, every judgement call and the last mile. Where your value actually lands.
You are never handing over the decision. You are handing over the build.
M&A
How an M&A process works with me.
A transaction, run end to end as an engagement. The information request (RFI), the IM, the indicative offers (NBIOs), due diligence, negotiation and close. How it runs depends on whether you are selling your own business or advising someone who is.
If you are an adviser, how much I take is your call. The whole transaction, or the parts you name: the model, the IM, the data room, the buyer list, the diligence. You tell me what resourcing you need, and the table below is where you point.
Through an accounting firm, or if you are selling your own business, I run all of it. The model, the IM, the buyer approaches, the data room, through to completion.
Ten steps, plus a set-up that happens once. Six to nine months from the day we start.
From the first look at a business through to funds settled. The client relationship stays yours.
How it runs with an adviser holding the mandate. Through an accounting firm, or on your own sale, the middle column is mine as well.
| Phase | Step | Your client | You, the adviser | Me |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Set upOnce, before the first deal | Set‑uptwo to three days, and never repeated | Not involved | Send me two or three of your own IMs, two or three proposals you have won with, and your workbooks if you have them. | Learn your format: how your IMs are written, how you pitch a proposal, and how your workbooks are built. Every engagement after this comes back in your house style, and a proposal can go out the day you need one. |
| Win itBefore the mandate | 01 Researchso the pitch has something behind it | Not involved yet | Give me the name. Decide whether to pitch. | Research the company itself, then the market read, the comparables and the likely buyers, before you commit to anything. |
| 02 ProposalI draft it, it goes out as yours | Receives it from you | It goes out under your name. Write it yourself if you would rather. | I draft it to the proposals you gave me at set-up, so it reads like one of yours. It carries the indicative multiple range, and an enterprise value too if your client has already provided financials.The proposal | |
| PrepareMonth 1 | 03 Valuation rangea multiple range, not a single number | Provides the management accounts. | Send me the historical transactions and trading multiples, then agree the range with me before it goes to your client or any buyer. | Build the multiple range into the workbook off your transaction data.Indicative multiple range |
| 04 Workbookthe number everything refers back to | Answers on normalisations. | Review the normalisations. They are judgement, not arithmetic. | Build from the management accounts, normalised earnings through to equity value. A separate section takes the multiple range through the bridge from enterprise value to equity.The workbook, with the equity bridge | |
| 05 Teaser and IMthe buyer's first full read | Answers the information request. | Review before either goes out. | Run the request, hold the client meeting, and build both documents in your template.Information request (RFI), teaser and IM | |
| 06 Buyer listresearched in full before any approach | Names anyone to exclude. | Approve who gets approached. | Name every buyer, with the evidence behind each.Buyer landscape | |
| MarketMonths 2–4 | 07 Approach and NDAsall in the same window, not one at a time | Not involved | Make the approaches. The buyer relationships are yours. | Prepare the approach pack and track the NDAs.Approach pack and NDA tracker |
| 08 Indicative offers (NBIOs)they land together, which is where price is won | Chooses between buyers. | Advise and negotiate. | Compare the offers like for like, so the choice is on the numbers.Offer comparison | |
| CloseMonths 4–9 | 09 Due diligencepreparation is what stops the number re-opening | Provides the material. | Hold the buyer relationship. | Build and run the data room. Answer the information requests.Data room, and a weekly progress note |
| 10 Completionconditions satisfied, funds settled | Signs. | Negotiate the final agreements and close. | Final numbers and schedules.Final numbers and schedules |
The relationship stays yours. I take the workload.
Selling your own business, or introduced by your accountant: I take all of it.
Sized on enterprise value, not revenue. From $5m a full process is worth running. Below that a broker is the better fit, and I say so early.
What I build
Information memorandum
The most defined thing I build. A full sell-side IM, a teaser plus IM behind the NDA, or an IM into a broker-led process. An editable PowerPoint, built in your template where you have one, the live workbook behind it, an indicative multiple range with the equity bridge in the workbook, and the buyer landscape with every buyer named.
The full sell-side or buy-side process
The full sequence, or one stage of it. Request for information through to the data room and the offer analysis. Buy-side target screening, the approach list, and the analysis behind an offer. Or a single stage: just the model, just the data room, just the buyer landscape. If you hold the mandate, you run the process and I build what it needs. Selling direct, or through an accounting firm, I run all of it.
Examples
Sector research
What the sector is worth, before you pitch
The market, who has been buying, what they paid, and what moves the number. It goes into the pitch, so it carries a view instead of a promise to form one.
Read the example (PDF)
Information memorandum
The document a buyer reads once they have signed
The business, its earnings, its outlook, and the exhibits that carry them. A mock-up, so nothing in it is confidential.
Read the example (PDF)
Buyer landscape
Every buyer named, on one page
Arranged by how strong the evidence behind each one actually is, with the detailed candidate table behind it. The working version, with every name reasoned.
Read the example (PDF)Valuations
Set up once. Every engagement after that follows your method.
Two to three days
to learn your method. Once, at the start, and never repeated. Every engagement after it comes back in your format.
Your method, learned once from your own finished work.
Send me two or three finished examples. I build the next one to the same method, and every one after that. The examples are the specification. I do not bring a house method and apply it to your client; I take yours and work to it. Send each new engagement in whatever state you have it.
Valuation, your method applied to your next deal
An indicative range for a pitch, a full valuation report in draft written for a reader who wants a different number, or the analysis behind an expert's report for the expert who signs it. I am never the signatory. Built dynamic: change the multiple, the discount rate or the maintainable earnings, and the range, the bridge and the commentary move with it.
How a valuation engagement runs
The scope is agreed between you and your client before I am involved. That is your process, not mine to decide, and the engagement arrives with it settled.
The workbook
I build them into the workbook in your structure, as per your current workbook. Normalisations happen here, at the end of the build.
The comparables
You pull the comparables for the sector, historical transactions and trading comparables, and send them as a sheet.
Built in
I build those in the way your workbooks are built.
The number, discussed
I calculate the range mechanically. Then the number is discussed: you confirm it, or take the upper or lower end and say why, and that reason goes on the record.
The report
I update the report in your format, your tables and your wording, on the basis of your previous reports.
Your judgement, on the record
Three decisions are yours on every engagement:
- Which normalisations are in, and which are not
- Which comparables are genuinely comparable
- Which end of the range, and why
No engagement goes out without you having looked at these critical factors.
The sections where your judgement is required are set out so they form part of your own internal record: how and why you applied your mind. Where a formal opinion or a signature is required, it is yours.
Send me two or three you have already done, and the valuation you want built. The first one back is free, in your format, and you judge it against your own before anything else applies.
Send me two or threeFractional CFO services
Your numbers, pointed forwards.
Your accounts show what the bank did. Not which jobs made money.
Profit and a balance sheet, three weeks after the month ends. Your decisions are about jobs, prices and people. Those numbers live somewhere else.
Accounting firms: the relationship stays yours. The same work runs under your name, with me in front of your client as part of your team.
If these are the questions in front of you, this is for you.
01Is there enough cash to cover the next two payrolls?In your accounts.
02Do we arrange an overdraft now, or wait and see?In your accounts, once forecast.
03Which clients and jobs still make money once overheads are counted?Split across two systems.
04Do we put prices up, take on the hire, or hold?Nowhere yet.
05Revenue went up. Profit did not. Why?The why is in delivery.
Only some of this is in your accounts
Trading, cash and debt come from your accounts.
Winning work, delivery and people do not. Your quotes, timesheets and accounts each hold a piece. Nothing joins them.
The four things
Knowing what is coming
Twelve months of profit, balance sheet and cash from today, updated every month against what actually happened.
The rolling forecast, the budget and reforecast, the model itself
Knowing where the money is actually made
Which clients, products and jobs earn their keep once overheads are counted, and the few numbers that move the business rather than describe it. How long it takes to win a client, what a job really costs to deliver, where the hours go.
Margin by client, product or service line, pricing and unit economics, cost structure, monthly reporting with the variance explained, and performance measurement: the operational KPIs beside the financial ones on one dashboard.
Deciding before you commit
What the hire, the lease or the price rise does to the rest of the year, while it is still a question rather than a commitment.
Scenario and sensitivity modelling, business cases, capital expenditure appraisal, changes to how the business charges
Cash, and the people who lend it
Where the cash is tied up, the month it gets tightest, and the pack a bank or a board asks for, presented if you want me there.
Working capital, the 13-week view, covenant headroom, raising, lender and board packs
This is what the work looks like. A worked dashboard for an invented company, and the same instrument I draft from your own numbers at the first step below.
Specimen. Every figure, client and balance is invented. Open it full screen.
Where we start
01
A conversation
Where you are trying to take the business, and the decision sitting in front of you now. Nothing to prepare.
02
Your management accounts
The last 24 months, as you already have them. Nothing else at this stage, and no access to your accounting system.
03
What comes back
A first draft of your CFO dashboard, built on the 24 months you sent. Three columns: what your numbers already show, what they could show with no new records, and what would need a tracking step built before it can be measured at all. We walk through it together, at no charge.
04
If it is worth going on with
A monthly retainer, with anything beyond the agreed scope charged hourly. No lock-in, and we work to that rhythm from there.
Reports and board packs
The work most often done by the most expensive person in the room, because the format is fiddly and the deadline is fixed. The full monthly or quarterly board pack in the format the board already reads, an investment-committee paper, or recurring management reporting built once so each period is an update rather than a rebuild.
Tell me the scope and I will price it.
The forecast, the board pack, the funding question in front of you. Bring the one that is closest, and I will tell you what I would build first.
Tell me the scopeLead generation for business owners
The pipeline is not thin because you need more leads.
Three things keep a service business stuck, and the number of leads coming in is not one of them. This page is the first three, in the order to do them, and the same guide is on one page you can keep.
Every hour of it is going somewhere. The question is where.
You are doing the outreach. You are on LinkedIn, you are at the events, you are following up. The pipeline still feels thin, and the reason is not the volume arriving at the top of it. A large share of the effort goes to people who were never going to buy. The rest stops the moment delivery gets busy. And the conversations that do go well end without a number on the table. Those are the three, in the order they have to be fixed.
A
Who you talk to
A large share of the effort goes to people who were never going to buy.
The fixOne page of criteria, applied backwards to the pipeline you have this morning.
B
When you sell
It stops the moment delivery gets busy, because it is the one thing with no deadline on it.
The fixA block in the diary that does not move because something came up.
C
How it ends
The conversation goes well and finishes without a number on the table.
The fixThe return, in their figures. Then ask for the decision and stop talking.
Step A
Write down who is actually worth talking to
Count the conversations you had last quarter. Now count the ones where the person had the problem you solve, the money to fix it, and a reason to fix it this quarter rather than next year.
The second number is your pipeline. The first one is your calendar.
What to do. Your criteria already exist. They are the reason you can tell within ten minutes whether a conversation is going anywhere. They are also in your head, which means nobody else in the business can use them. Get them onto one page. A prospect is worth your time when all four are true.
- NeedThey have the specific problem you solve, not the general version of it that any of your competitors could also solve.
- MoneyThe budget exists, and you know roughly what they have spent on this kind of work before.
- UrgencySomething has happened in the business that makes this a this-quarter problem. If nothing has happened, nothing is urgent.
- AuthorityYou are speaking to the person who can say yes, not the person who has to go and ask.
Then apply it backwards, which is the part that costs something. Go through the pipeline as it stands and take out everything that fails the four tests. Refer those people on where you can. What is left is thinner than what you had this morning, and it is the first honest view of your pipeline you have had.
The page goes to everyone who touches an enquiry. If you and the person answering the phone are working to different definitions of a good lead, you do not have criteria. You have a preference.
You are done when
Someone else in the business can look at a new enquiry and reach the same yes or no you would, without asking you.
Step B
Book the time before you need it
Work arrives. Delivery takes over. Prospecting stops, because it is the one thing on the list with no deadline attached to it. Three months later the pipeline is empty, so you sell hard, and you sell to whoever answers. Then the work arrives and it starts again.
That is not a difficult market or a bad quarter. It is what happens when selling is something you do once you have noticed you need it.
What to do. Put a block in the diary. Every day if the business can carry it, every week at the absolute minimum. Same time, treated the way you treat a client meeting, which means it does not move because something came up.
One rule about what goes in it: conversations with people who pass the page you wrote in step A, and follow-ups on the ones already open. That is the whole list. Not updating the system. Not rewriting the email. Not researching a list of names. Not thinking about outreach. All of those feel like selling and none of them puts a conversation in the diary.
What changes is not only the volume. Selling from a pipeline with something in it, you do not need the next one to close. You hold the price at the first hesitation. You tell someone they are not a fit and mean it. The business you win is better business, because you were in a position to be honest about it.
You are done when
A month has gone by in which delivery was flat out and the block still happened every time.
Step C
Give them the number, then ask for the decision
The call went well. Good questions, no real objections, they said they would come back to you. Then nothing. The comfortable explanation is that the timing was wrong.
Sometimes it is. More often they liked the conversation and were never given anything to justify the spend with, either to themselves or to whoever else has to agree to it.
Put the return in numbers, and use theirs. What the problem is costing them now, what it looks like fixed, and over what period. That takes figures from their side of the table, which means asking for them earlier in the conversation than feels natural. If you cannot build the number, you do not yet understand the problem well enough to be quoting on it.
Then ask. Does it make sense to move forward. Then stop talking. If the answer is yes, give them the next step in the same conversation, with a date on it.
None of this needs you to be pushy, and the hard-close version of this stopped working a long time ago. But not asking is not the alternative to it. They came to you with a problem they want solved. Leaving them to work out the value on their own, and then waiting, is not restraint.
You are done when
You can look at the last five proposals and find the return calculated in each one, and a date by which the decision was due.
That is the system. None of it costs anything to start.
A page of criteria, a block in the diary that does not move, and a number followed by a question. Reading this is not the hard part, and the reason it does not get done is not that it is hard. It is that this is the work with no deadline on it, and the business always has one.
Or I build it with you, in four weeks
One session on your own records to find which of the three is actually costing you the most, then one build session for each. A review at 30, 60 and 90 days to confirm it is still running.
- A written diagnostic on your own numbers, naming the one thing holding revenue back
- Your pipeline rebuilt and honest. You will know what is real
- The sales process out of your head and onto paper, in your name
- Rates reset across the book, with the conversations planned
- An operating manual in your name, tested until a second person can follow it without questions
- Everything owned by the business, not rented from a consultant
And when you do come to sell, this is the part a buyer pays for. Not the procedures. Earnings that keep arriving once you are no longer the one bringing them in.
Written for service businesses between $1m and $5m in revenue, where the owner is still the one selling.
The diagnostic, at no charge. Six readings from your own numbers, one verdict. If there is nothing here worth fixing I will tell you so.
Start a conversationFAQ
The questions advisers actually ask.
These four come up on every first call. The first three answers hold whether the work is a valuation, a board pack or a full transaction. The fees differ, and the fourth answer gives both.
If you are an adviser or an accountant
Will you take my client?
No. Every engagement starts with a signed mutual non-solicit: contractual, not a promise you have to take on trust. The relationship is yours, the work goes out under your brand, and you keep the credit.
Who signs it?
If you hold the client, you do. Where a formal opinion or a signature is required, it is yours. I build the work and flag every open call; I never make the judgement and never sign. If you have come to me directly, the only work that needs a signature at all is a valuation, and that one comes through your adviser or your accountant.
What if I need it in three days?
Ask. Set-up takes two to three days, happens once and is never repeated. After that I either fit your deadline or tell you straight away that I cannot.
What does it cost?
Tell me the scope and I will price it. What a piece of work costs depends on what it is, and the arrangement differs between repeatable work, a transaction, and an ongoing CFO relationship. Bring the one in front of you and I will tell you what it takes.
The first deliverable is free. Pick one piece of repeatable work: a valuation, a board pack, a forecast. Send two or three of your own as the specification, and judge what comes back against your firm's own format before there is any question of price.
Your firm invoices your client as usual and never funds a fee itself. Scope and terms are agreed in writing before any work begins.
If you own the company
Do I need an adviser or an accountant involved?
Not for a transaction, a board pack, a model, a forecast or CFO work. I run those directly. A valuation is the exception: it ends in a signed opinion, so it comes through your adviser or your accountant and they sign it.
Who approaches buyers?
I do. When you come to me directly I am the adviser running the process, so the approaches are mine to make.
Credentials
US$2.3bn
Largest listed transaction worked on · valuation and fairness opinion, JSE
Sell-side and buy-side M&A, valuations and independent expert reports on listed transactions, alongside the A$1.5–6m EBITDA mid-market sell-sides that are the centre of it, whether the owner comes direct or an adviser holds the mandate.
Listed and large-cap
JSE · Fairness Opinion
Northam Platinum: empowerment restructure
Independent expert team (JSE): valuation & fairness opinion
US$2.3bn
JSE · Fairness Opinion
Assore Limited: delisting via share buy-back
Independent expert team (JSE): valuation & fairness opinion
c. US$1.0bn
Mining · Coal
Life-of-mine valuation & financing for two assets out of business rescue
Cost-driver analysis; LoM & capital-structure modelling
EV c. £381m
Mining & Metals · Buy-side
Financial DD & valuation of a JV operating mine
Real-terms DCF; ROM, mining-plan & reserve analysis
Equity c. £81m
Renewable Energy · Valuation
Sum-of-the-parts valuation across four countries, for the Stock Exchange of Mauritius
Model build; country-risk WACC; comparable-beta research
Equity c. US$26m
Owner-managed businesses
Health & Fitness · Sell-side
Sale of five fitness centres
Lead adviser: financial model, IM & data room
EBITDA c. A$3.7m
Drilling & Mining · Buy-side
Acquisition of a drilling company from a PE vendor
Lead adviser: buyer-side negotiations, lead model
EBITDA c. A$3.5m
Professional Services · Sell-side
Sale of a quantity-surveying & cost-management firm
Lead adviser: IM & model, running the offer process
EBITDA c. A$1.5m
Mine Camps · Sell-side
Sale of a mining accommodation business
Lead adviser: IM, teaser & data room
Strategic sale
Live and confidential mandates shown by sector · closed, publicly-announced transactions named
Who you are working with
Leo Malan
Over ten years in BDO's Corporate Finance and Advisory teams, in South Africa and then Perth, running M&A mandates end to end. A Chartered Accountant with twenty years in the profession and deep experience across mining and resources M&A, coal, gold, PGM, chrome and iron ore, in Australia, Southern Africa and cross-border. The standard of execution you would expect from a national corporate finance team, available to you directly.
Experience20 YRS · 10+ AT BDO CORP FINANCE
QualificationCHARTERED ACCOUNTANT · CA ANZ
EngagementDIRECTLY, OR UNDER YOUR FIRM'S BRAND
HandlingCONFIDENTIAL
Start here
Let's talk, confidentially.
Tell me what is in front of you. I will tell you how quickly I can have it done.
Start a confidential conversationor email leo@leomalan.com directly