We fully expect Henley Advisors to remain an acquired taste. Not every potential client will need our services, and not every potential client should engage us.

That being said, we think there is a pretty wide range of clients that may have need for our services in certain situations.

• Small- to medium-sized companies with little or no experience in dealing with M&A or capital markets that need unbiased, expert advice from someone they can trust. In addition to helping such companies execute transactions—if that is in fact what they decide to do—we can step back and advise them on the pros, cons, and tradeoffs involved in any transaction or situation under consideration. We can tell them which investment banks to interview for their financing transaction, how to get good pricing from them, and—most importantly—how to make sure the banks they choose do a good job in executing the transaction. Most companies this size do not need full time expert help for their once-in-a-blue-moon IPO or M&A transaction. We offer that expertise as needed.

• Medium- to large-sized companies with plenty of experience and perhaps even dedicated corporate development staff in place, but with a lack of time to go about strategy in a proactive, well-thought-out way. We can offer such clients a valuable external perspective on their strategy and their opportunities. We can share best practices with their M&A and corporate development staff. We can help sort the wheat from the chaff in the blizzard of unsolicited offering memos that cross their desks, and—most importantly—we can help them design and implement a proactive M&A strategy that helps the company choose its own destiny.

• Large companies looking for specialized support or expertise in areas of M&A execution or corporate strategy development. We can help them dig down into the strategic alternatives for a particular business line or subsidiary—without trying to tie our analysis to a particular outcome or transaction. We can act as the industry expert co-advisor on a large M&A transaction alongside another investment bank, and we can offer unbundled valuation and due diligence services to supplement the work of their own internal staff.

• Private equity shops with portfolio companies or investment interests in our areas of industry expertise that need strategic advice and/or transaction execution. We can provide such clients with start-to-finish advisory services, or cut and paste a selection of particular services, like valuation work or business due diligence, into a customized offering.

Of course, the best way to figure out whether you need our services, and whether we can help, is to give us a call.