When your fund needs an exit, it becomes your problem immediately. Your company is owned by a fund, and now the clock has run out.
The fund is past year seven, maybe year eight. They have to return cash to their investors. The company is doing fine, but the exit is right in front of you.
From where you sit as a CEO, chair, or CFO, three things usually happen without your input.
First, a quick trade sale. It gets negotiated at a discount because the seller is in a rush, not because the business is weak. You end up with whichever buyer needs the least convincing.
Second, a continuation vehicle. The company gets moved into a new box, but the exact same manager sits on both sides of the table. You spend the next stretch reporting to the people who just sold you to themselves.
Third, another extension. The fund asks for time it has already spent twice. Hiring stays on hold. Capex gets frozen. Big customer talks stall while you wait for a decision made three levels above your head.
None of those choices are made for your benefit. They are made because the fund ran out of time.
There is a fourth path. It is worth knowing about before your owner picks one of the first three.
If your business qualifies — audited, profitable, industrial or medical, run right — a structured U.S. listing changes the math. The fund takes part of its stake in cash and part in tradeable stock, set up with a buyer before anything goes public.
For you, this changes who you answer to. Instead of swapping one owner for a new one with a fresh set of demands, ownership spreads out into public shareholders. You and your board stay in place, because a working management team is what the public market actually wants.
This does not work for every business. If your numbers or governance cannot stand up to scrutiny, no structure can fix that. And your owner has to be willing to look at it.
But it is the one route where you and your board sit in the room, rather than finding out in an email what someone else decided for you.
If your owner is reaching the end of their fund life, let’s look at the numbers together.