Four situations come up again and again.
Different countries, different sectors, same underlying cause: capital and exit routes that are closed locally and open elsewhere.
None of the owners, CFOs or partners in these cases is disorganised. Each one is holding something valuable that the European market will not price properly, will not finance, or will not let them exit cleanly.
A division that only competitors will buy.
A business unit with its own customers, accounts and management team, consistently worth more on its own than inside the group, but where every obvious buyer is a rival who would need full disclosure.
→ A fourth path for your division
A founder-owned manufacturer with no succession plan.
An industrial company with decades of audited history and a second-line management team, where the options on the table are selling to a rival, selling to a fund or leaving an indivisible asset to the next generation.
→ Liquidity while your team stays in place
A fund at the end of its holding period.
A portfolio company that has performed, in year seven or eight of the fund, where the IPO window assumed at signing is still closed and the trade bids are not acceptable to LPs.
→ An exit when the IPO window stays shut
A company that is “too small” for the local IPO market.
A profitable industrial with real customers and audited accounts, told politely to come back when it is twice the size, while the capital being requested is exactly what would take it there.
→ Growth capital at your current scale
Each of these situations has a route that uses markets such as Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange to open options that local advice does not show.
None of them is simple, and none of them is universal, but all of them can be tested against clear criteria before anyone takes risk.
If you recognise yourself in any of these, it would be a good opportunity to discuss.