“Longer-term partners with a vested economic interest provide the most un-biased advice on transformational events such as capital raises, M&A execution and dispute resolution”

Services

GEP provides services for both private and publicly listed companies.

1. Operational Improvement and Restructuring:

  • Setting the target
    • Business planning:
      • Work with management to establish a ‘game plan’ for the company, including market development, human resources, information technology, capital requirements.
      • Ensure that goals, responsibilities and the time table for execution are set out in order to measure progress and create accountability.
    • Counseling and mentoring:
      • Act as a sounding board for the leadership of a company.
      • It is often lonely at the top and having a trusted outsider to confide in and draw from differing experiences, is valuable.
  • Establishing business systems
    • Define, assemble and measue the appropriate business metrics.
    • Develop tools to measure performance, create accountability and to provide appropriate checks and balances. These tools include timely and accessible operating and financial metrics.
    • This 'system' should be a platform for growth and not one which inhibits opportunity.
  • Financial analysis and execution
    • Cash flow management:
      • Establish daily controls and monitoring of receivables, payables and foreign exchange.
      • Optimize the movement of cash amongst operations, bank accounts, credit facilities, and other financial instruments.
    • Budgeting and forecasting:
      • Establish monthly targets in all operations for the upcoming fiscal period.
      • Ensure 'drill down' of all expense items, develop operating metrics for measurement in the upcoming period and establish capital expenditure and research and development budgets.
      • Readjust expectations as macro environment changes occur and ensure forecast is based on sound logic.
      • Communicate forecast to appropriate stakeholders (investors, employees, financial institutions).
    • Debtor management:
      • Build relationship and understanding with all financial institutions.
      • Ensure that reporting requirements are clearly understood and executed.
      • Build relationships with other financial institutions in order to provide a comparative for ownership and management.

2. Corporate Finance:

  • Capital raise process management
    • Evaluation:
      • Identification of what type of capital is right, whether it is equity, senior debt, subordinated debt or a combination of.
    • Sourcing:
      • Assist or lead the process, whether through private equity, venture capital, banks, pension funds or angel investors.
    • Marketing:
      • Packaging of the company and the opportunity is critical to success.
        Due diligence-proofing a company in advance reduces time, improves success rates and builds confidence with financiers.
    • Negotiations:
      • Lend our experience from many years and numerous complex capital raises to increase the success rates and the quality of the terms and financial partners.
    • Legal support:
      • Access to the professionals that can ensure a timely and quality completion of the capital raise.

3. Transaction Advisory:

  • Sale, merger or acquisition process management
    • Packaging:
      • Ensure a self analysis is conducted, promoting strengths and addressing weaknesses.
      • Development of a marketing document which clearly outlines the opportunity.
    • Evaluation:
      • Conduct an analysis of the target, including financial modeling, to determine value from the company's perspective to ensure that the value is understood and clear parameters are developed.
    • Negotiation:
      • Support or lead ownership/management in the transaction.
      • Typically these skills are not core to ownership/management.
    • Legal support:
      • Provide access to the professionals that can ensure a timely and quality completion of the transaction.
    • Due diligence execution:
      • Run a comprehensive program including financial, operational, tax, environmental, insurance, information systems, legal.
      • Includes management of numerous stakeholders on both sides of the transaction (lawyers, accountants, financial institutions).
    • Integration planning:
      • One of the most critical and often overlooked steps in the transaction process.
      • Whether ownership/management are buying, selling or merging, developing a plan with roles, responsibilities, and a timeline is critical to success.

4. Capital Markets Advisory:

GEP helps position a publicly traded company for maximum exposure in the capital markets. A company must be properly positioned and presented to a targeted group of influencers with an objective of establishing and or expanding the active following for its growth and financing requirements.

  • Strategy
    • Development of a comprehensive investor relations strategy and plan that is aligned with the company's business plan.
    • Provide counsel to senior management in connection with the company's financial media relations activities.
  • Content
    • Draft and disseminate all news releases.
      Develop and maintain the company's investor presentation and investor fact sheet.
    • Counsel in connection with the writing of the company's annual and quarterly financial reports.
    • Provide counselling, writing and editing services in connection with the development and maintenance of the investor section of the company's website.
  • Research
    • Development of a targeted retail distribution list for investor information materials.
    • Monitor and report to management trading activity, developments of comparable public companies, and changes in significant ownership positions, brokerage house positions, short positions.
  • Outreach
    • Arrange meetings with appropriate sell-side analysts.
    • Identify and schedule opportunities for management to present the company's investment story to fund managers, analysts and institutional investors, and retail brokers who are in a position to purchase, or influence the purchase of the company's securities.
    • Provide support for all of these meetings including pre-briefings, presentation rehearsal, materials production, on site logistics support and post-meeting follow-up.

5. Professional Directorship and Governance:

In addition to GEP's partners, GEP provides access to senior business leaders to join the company’s board of directors or advisory board. Upgrading a company's board with an experienced professional(s) to chair the board, chair the audit committee or chair the compensation or governance committees will build confidence with stakeholders; an important and central deliverable in a well thought out and executed capital markets strategy.

6. Proxy Contest/Corporate Dispute Resolution:

Boards, management teams and investors can find themselves in conflict over a range of issues including poor stock price performance, suggested poor governance practices, a sale proposal from a prospective acquirer, an attempt to acquire an acquisition target, or an attempt to raise capital.

These issues have shareholder value creation in common and emerge in different forms: in disagreement over a single resolution at an annual meeting, a full proxy contest for control of the board, voting on plans of arrangement, and hostile takeovers. They all require winning support from investors and motivating them to take action to demonstrate that support.

GEP acts as the strategic advisor that will help boards and concerned shareholders achieve their objective. GEP will manage the issues that require shareholder or unit-holder support. From proxy contests, mergers and acquisitions, to gaining shareholder approval for resolutions and plans of arrangement, GEP provides a proven integrated approach to managing the issue to a positive conclusion.