Case Study - iGrasp

Not all businesses are sold through a formal auction and iGrasp is a good example of a business receiving an unsolicited offer. iGrasp was a software start up funded by the founders and a small number of business angels.

The company was involved in the development and sale of software for large scale recruitment campaigns and on-line applicant management.

They were approached by Stepstone, a Norwegian quoted competitor. Our role was to ensure that the price offered was delivered as well as ensuring that the vendors’ position was optimised in relation to items such as the calculation of the surplus cash in the business and also that as much of the consideration as possible was in the form of cash on completion. Initially, a large proportion of the consideration was in Stepstone shares but it was negotiated that these shares would not be subject to any lock-in period allowing the vendors the option of disposing of the shares on completion, or soon thereafter. The business was sold for c£10m

During the process we did contemplate introducing other acquirers to the process but management and ourselves were confident that the value being realised from the transaction fully valued the business and avoided the unnecessary risks of an auction process.