Financing growth without giving up control.

Growth costs money before it brings any in. A new production line, the acquisition of a competitor, building up a foreign market or simply an order backlog that ties up more working capital than the principal bank is willing to finance: in all these cases, the financing structure determines whether the project goes ahead and at what price.

Growth capital finances growth that a company cannot sustain on its own resources and with its principal bank alone. We structure such growth financing and manage the process from the business plan through valuation to disbursement. This applies to established companies as well as to companies that have emerged from a restructuring and whose business is viable before there is a balance sheet to show for it.

What you gain

  • 1
    More than one offer on the table. Anyone who only talks to their principal bank is not negotiating. We create comparability.
  • 2
    The right type of capital, not the obvious one. Debt, mezzanine and equity have different prices and different consequences for your freedom of action.
  • 3
    A financing package that stands up to scrutiny. Documents of the kind lenders and investors expect.
  • 4
    Looking beyond the principal bank. Development banks and guarantee banks (Bürgschaftsbanken, which provide loan guarantees for small and medium-sized businesses with public counter-guarantees), credit funds, private equity firms: we identify who is suitable for your project.
  • 5
    You keep your mind on the business. A financing process ties up capacity for months. We take it over.

Related services
M&A
Business succession
Integrated financial planning

Phone +49 541 500 38-0
zentrale@worstbrock.de

The structure determines the price

A common wrong decision in growth financing is not the wrong interest rate, but the wrong type of capital. Financing a long-term investment through an overdraft facility costs freedom of action in the next bottleneck. Conversely, raising equity where secured debt financing would have been possible costs shares, permanently.

We therefore start with the structure before terms are discussed:

  • Debt: investment loans, syndicated loans, Schuldschein loans, supplemented by development and guarantee programmes that often remain unused in practice
  • Asset-based financing: leasing, factoring, asset-based lending and sale-and-leaseback for projects linked to specific assets
  • Mezzanine: subordinated loans and silent partnerships where the equity ratio limits debt financing, without shares being given up
  • Equity: minority stakes held by private equity firms or family offices, where the project would overstretch the balance sheet

As a rule, the result is a combination. Which one depends on the purpose, term, available collateral and how much say you are prepared to give up.

From requirement to disbursement

Requirement and target structure. First, the question of how much capital is needed, for what and when, derived from integrated financial planning, not from a wish figure. This results in the target capital structure.

Documents. Lenders and investors decide on the basis of a financial model, a company profile and a traceable derivation of the assumptions. We prepare this package so that questions are anticipated.

Approach. We identify which lenders and investors suit the project, its size and the industry, and approach them in parallel so that several offers are available for the negotiation. We also examine federal and state development and guarantee programmes, as they rarely come up on their own in talks with the bank.

Negotiation. Offers are made comparable: not only interest and term, but collateral, covenants, information obligations, special repayment rights and grounds for termination. These ancillary conditions determine how much flexibility you will still have in three years.

Completion. We support you through to disbursement and set up the reporting required by the agreement. The legal structuring is handled by legal partners from our network. We do not provide legal advice.

When the balance sheet history stands in the way

Two starting positions in which growth financing is difficult to obtain:

After a restructuring has been completed. The company is viable again, the measures are taking effect, the figures are right. Even so, the balance sheet history is attached to the request, and a rating looks back over years that no longer have anything to do with the current situation.

For a company emerging from a restructuring. After a transfer of the business by way of an asset deal (übertragende Sanierung), a management buy-out from insolvency proceedings or a spin-off, a company appears on the market that is operationally well established (with customers, orders, a workforce and know-how) and that starts from zero on paper: no balance sheet history, no credit rating, often no unencumbered collateral. For a credit score, this is a start-up. In fact, it is an established business in a new shell. Someone has to be able to explain this difference to lenders and investors, with figures, not with optimism.

This is exactly our starting point: anyone who has supported the restructuring themselves can show what has changed, why it is viable and which assumptions in the planning hold up. For the second group, development and guarantee instruments gain in importance, because they come into play where collateral is lacking.

Let us talk about your plans.

Whether and how a project can be financed can usually be assessed in the first conversation.