Business & Finance
Cross-Border Acquisition of a Family-Owned Manufacturer
Client: A Pacific Northwest private equity group (anonymized)
$11M
Transaction Value
90 days
LOI to Close
$0
Post-Close Liability
The Challenge
Our client identified a 40-year-old family-owned manufacturing business as a strong acquisition target, but the deal involved complex estate considerations for the founding family, an unresolved earnout dispute with a prior minority shareholder, and environmental contingencies on two of the three properties under contract.
Our Strategy
We led due diligence across corporate, real estate, environmental, and employment dimensions simultaneously. We negotiated purchase agreement terms that allocated environmental risk to the sellers with a funded escrow, structured a phased equity rollover for the founding family to meet their estate planning objectives, and resolved the minority shareholder dispute through a concurrent buyout negotiation.
The Outcome
The transaction closed on schedule with no post-closing disputes. Fourteen months after closing, the environmental indemnity provisions we negotiated were triggered — protecting our client from a remediation cost that would otherwise have been uninsured.