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Corporate M&A Model

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Industry: Logistics

Client : A UK-based fast-growing commercial vehicle leasing business seeking to develop a robust business plan model for all its group entities to support financial transactions like debt refinancing, acquisitions, and exit strategies.

Problems

The existing model had:

  • A cumbersome and slow process to run leasing contracts for the trading entities,
  • File crash issues due to its heavy size and inefficient modelling,
  • A rigid structure to cater to any new amendments,
  • Incorrect modelling of the revolver facility,
  • Intercompany transaction errors at the consolidated level,
  • A complex and manual process to add new bolt-on acquisitions and combine them with the existing business,

Solution

FAB delivered a robust and flexible monthly financial model for seven entities with two consolidation levels/groups,

  • The new model included; User-friendly workspace to input all leasing terms for each contract with automated (VBA) functionality to generate forecast profiles for every lease,
  • Efficient and light Excel functions that massively improved the calculation speed and brought down the file size,
  • New revolver facility in one of the trading entities which checked the cash position in the whole group before making any drawdowns or repayments,
  • Workspace to add and combine multiple acquisitions,
  • Checks to pick up intercompany errors and a workspace to pass correction journals,
  • Seamless process to update monthly Trial Balance actuals from the accounting system and automatically combine it with the business forecast data,
  • Ability to forecast and store them as budgets or re-forecasts for variance analysis,

Client Benefits

  • Highly efficient model and process for managing ongoing operations of the business.
  • Use of Trial Balance actuals instead of high-level management accounts, increasing the credibility of historical numbers.
  • Accurate debt sizing (refinancing) and revolver facility drawdowns and repayments to maintain a minimum cash balance at every entity level.
  • Reduction in model update time from days to a few hours.
  • Fully dynamic printable reporting pack for the management.

Client Testimonial

“As part of a refinancing exercise, we employed Ernst & Young to produce a new forecasting tool.

The business model was complex, given the number of finance products we offered with varying terms and funding rates, together with the asset sales division.

We had acquired several businesses which needed to be incorporated into our reporting.

The model designed by EY became overly cumbersome and was ultimately not fit for purpose.

Yatin Sehgal was recommended to us, and it became apparent very quickly that his approach was much more methodical than we had seen previously.

The end result was a product designed to our specific requirements, which provided us with the capability to easily forecast and report in a format which suited our needs.

Over the years I have dealt with Yatin and his team, I have always found them to be first-class in their professionalism and capability.

They are without doubt the best I have ever dealt with, always available and willing to support.

Chief Finance Officer .

Problems