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M&A advisory is the professional service of originating, structuring, valuing, negotiating and closing mergers, acquisitions and divestitures — typically provided by investment banks, boutiques or corporate-finance houses on a mandate.
M&A advisory is what a client buys: a scoped engagement letter to run sell-side or buy-side work. It is distinct from audit, from statutory valuation opinions, and from legal counsel — though a live deal consumes all of them.
Typical workstreams: positioning and materials; buyer/seller universe; process design (auction vs bilateral); valuation ranges; offer comparison; negotiation support; coordination of diligence; financing introductions on buy-side.
Mid-market European mandates often mix a retainer with a success fee on enterprise or equity value (sometimes a Lehman or double-Lehman scale). Buy-side retainers are more common when success is binary. None of that is a regulatory tariff; it is a contract.
Illustration only.
A €20m EBITDA founder sale: boutique advisor runs a two-step auction, 40 teasers, 12 NDAs, 5 management presentations, 2 final bids. Success fee 1.8% of equity value at €110m = €2.0m, against a €75k retainer creditable. Legal, QoE and tax due diligence sit outside that fee. Calling the QoE firm “the M&A advisor” is a category error.
Good advisory is process design and judgement under incomplete information. Bad advisory is a PDF teaser and a hope. Conflicts (buy-side and sell-side in the same sector, staple financing) need to be written down.
Company sale; carve-out; defence advisory; buy-and-build support for PE.
Advisory does not replace a board’s duty to decide. It does not guarantee a price. Unregulated “introducers” may not be providing advisory at all — just a name and an invoice.
Dazur is not a substitute for a mandated M&A advisor. It is the structured layer — data, valuation, matching — that advisors and principals can share so the mandate starts at analysis rather than at archaeology.