Transaction Services

Ensuring informed decisions for successful transactions

What we do

At Dow Schofield Watts, our transaction services team specialises in providing comprehensive financial due diligence for businesses engaging in exits, divestments, fund raising, and other significant transactions.

Our diligent approach is designed to ensure every transaction is informed by a crystal-clear understanding of the financial landscape presented back to you in a concise report.

Our award-winning team, led by industry pioneers, ensures that every transaction is grounded in a comprehensive and detailed understanding of the financial landscape. We pride ourselves on delivering unmatched quality and mentoring the next generation of experts.

Why choose us

The power of a firm, the quality of a boutique

Partner-led teams, partner-led delivery – Our partners lead their teams from the front, advising your business through even the most complex transactions and ensuring it proceeds as smoothly as possible. Our clients appreciate that we use our decades of experience to identify issues efficiently and suggest solutions that are pragmatic and practical.
Bespoke service tailored to your business – We are agile, creative, and flexible, recognising that a rigid approach isn’t effective for our clients. We tailor our service to your needs and goals, which our clients agree results in the best outcomes.
Expertise fit for complex matters – We’ve handled hundreds of transactions and gained extensive experience as both a firm and individuals. This means we have encountered a wide variety of transactions and can use that experience to work effectively and efficiently to deliver your desired outcome for a deal.

Where we can help

Financial Due Diligence

Whether it’s a platform investment or a bolt-on acquisition, our financial due diligence services offer a comprehensive evaluation of a business’s financial and commercial trading history and prospects, cash flow generation and balance sheet composition. We work with private equity houses, acquisitive corporate entities and funders to ensure the investor has a full understanding of the benefits and risks ahead of an acquisition.

Vendor Due Diligence

Similar to financial due diligence, vendor due diligence provides a clear, independent assessment of a company’s financial position, but on behalf of the seller, presented in a concise report which can be issued to prospective buyers, facilitating informed investment decisions. A vendor due diligence assignment also provides the vendor with advance warning of potential areas of buyer focus, whilst enabling the vendor to retain control of the sale process, maximising deal value.

Vendor Assistance

This early-stage, sell-side service helps vendors collate, prepare and present accurate, reliable and easy-to-use financial data to help demonstrate business value. This process can be applied either where a business’s financial information requires improvement prior to a sale process or where a management team has insufficient bandwidth. The vendor assistance process also identifies key value drivers and raises potential red flags early on, enabling management to take or present mitigating actions. This can also extend to assisting the vendor management team in preparing responses to likely buy-side question topics.

Completion Mechanism Advice

As part of a specific engagement, or extension of a due diligence assignment, we can guide acquirers or vendors through the completion mechanism process. This can involve the selection of an appropriate mechanism, analysing the business’s working capital and net cash/debt positions, identifying preferential positions for our client and working with the client’s legal advisors to ensure full protection through the Sale and Purchase Agreement.

What our clients say

"Dow Schofield Watts' transaction services report and overall approach were refreshingly candid. They assisted us on a range of issues from cash flow generation and bank reconciliations at the start of the transaction, to the completion accounts mechanism at the end. They were always close to the detail and communicated any issues to us in real time so that we were able to make decisions accordingly. Their assistance on this investment was invaluable".

Andy Marsh

Partner at Beech Tree Private Equity
"Dow Schofield Watts produced a high quality, highly focused due diligence report in a short period of time in line with the BGF focused approach. DSW quickly identified the key drivers of the business and produced robust analysis to help us fully understand the underlying profitability and cash generation. I was particularly impressed about the flexibility of the team in its approach and their own ability to identify areas of commercial interest to us as an investor. Communication of their views and findings and availability and responsiveness was first class".

David Colclugh

Business Growth Fund
“Having worked with many advisors over my investment career I always set high expectations. I want advisors that can reach considered decisions that will always achieve the best long term result – and deliver this advice often in complex and highly time pressured scenarios. Dow Schofield Watts stepped up on this transaction and ensured those expectations were exceeded. Their ability to go-to-bat for us in all discussions with a well-advised seller contributed to a successful transaction”.

Tristan Ramus

Non-executive Chairman of Castlerock Recruitment Group
“We would like to thank the Thames Valley Dow Schofield Watts team for their professionalism and personable approach, which we value and see as an independent extension of our deal team”

Peter Gould

M&A Director at Dains
“Dow Schofield Watts' work was carried out to a high standard and their reporting was clear and easy to follow – a real benefit at the business end of an M&A process. I was particularly impressed with the way Ed interrogated the validity of the order book and pipeline which was one of our key focus areas. They also supported us through the locked box workstream both pre and post completion. We look forward to working with them again in the future”.

Paul McCluskey

President of Concept Life Sciences
"We found the style and content of Dow Schofield Watts' reporting to be of a high quality. A follow up meeting to discuss the report was also particularly helpful, with DSW able to clearly substantiate the rationale underpinning their key findings and identified sensitivities. These outputs were a positive factor which helped with assisting our credit assessment and we look forward to working with them again in the future".

Joe Windle

Director at HSBC Leverage Finance
“I have utilised Dow Schofield Watts' transaction services team on more than one occasion (sell side and buy side) and each time I have been impressed by the professionalism, impartiality and ability to deliver to an often tight deadline. The team has the ability to dig deep into the financial data to draw out the underlying trends and present them in a concise, clear and non-debatable form. A really good team of people, with a strong reputation amongst PE-backed management teams in the North West of England as the go-to advisors for transaction services. In my view any transaction is going to be hard work and stressful and I would always choose to work with the DSW team”.

Mark Edwards

CEO of Mi Healthcare
“We engaged Dow Schofield Watts for Vendor Assistance at an early stage in our sales process. What stood out was the team’s capacity to grasp new concepts and build coherent models where little had existed before. Their ability to assimilate data, build processes and produce valuable analysis proved second to none. The team were all super smart and friendly. I don’t think they ever asked the same question twice and they delivered what we asked for, on time and on budget. I would certainly engage them again without hesitation if the need arose in the future.”

Douglas Gilmour

MD at Mobius Networks Limited
“We brought Dow Schofield Watts on board to assist with certain aspects of the financial due diligence and the completion mechanism. Their experience and ability to get up to speed and focus on the deal attributes were exactly what we were looking for. Having worked with them in the past we knew they would sit alongside us as a trusted advisor and provide support where and when needed – adding value to the process right through to completion”.

James Marshall

NorthEdge Capital
"Being the first time we had used Dow Schofield Watts, we took a great deal of comfort from the speed with which Cat and Ed got behind not just the financial information but also the operational data of the business, enabling early discussions around visitor numbers and cost base. They kept us as investor informed throughout and, helpfully, maintained their own lines of communication with our CDD provider, with this support remaining in place right up to completion".

Andy Lees

Partner at Palatine Private Equity

Let’s talk about your business’ future

Share your transaction goals with us, and we’ll link you to a Partner. Our goal is to connect you with the right expert for a no-obligation conversation.

Transaction Services

What we do

Why choose us