We buy profitable companies led by high-performing management teams, and then offer a range of support services to improve growth and profitability.

Selling your business is a once in a lifetime decision. You’ve spent decades serving customers, increasing turnover, and investing in employees, so you need to know that selling is the right thing to do for everyone involved.

You can trust that The Gray Company ethos is to help your successful business reach its full potential under your existing management team, and with our support. We won’t get involved in the daily running of the business, unless you want or need some hands-on support.

The Benefits

The benefits.

We’ve got ambitious growth plans and we’re moving quickly towards meeting some huge goals. We buy successful companies then invest in them to improve growth and profitability – that’s it.

Some of that is – of course – financial investment, but we also invest our expertise and support where your company needs it most. All of our companies have as much access as they need to our in-house bank of experts and support functions. As well as this, business leaders also benefit from regular meetings with other leaders on the Operations Board. This peer network is an invaluable resource for problem sharing, building innovative solutions, or collaborating on large projects or public tenders.

Our purpose is to expand The Gray Company, not to manage our group companies in a hands-on way. That’s why we’re different – we trust your management team to run your successful business, and are on hand to offer support where it’s needed.

Leaders are brought into the The Gray Company Operations Board, or if you’re ready to step away from the business, we’ll support your existing management team through the transition.

We support our subsidiaries by providing support in core areas of your business, such as;

• HR advice and support

• First-class legal advice

• IT systems support

• Marketing for your business

• Business development support

• Better procurement processes

• Compliance advice

The criteria.

We’re actively acquiring successful, well-managed, profitable companies in the building services industry. Whether you’re looking to sell because you’re ready to step away, or want to stay on in your leadership role to grow the company further, these are the criteria we look at when deciding if a business is right for The Gray Company.

To meet our criteria your business:

1. Is in the portable toilet industry (within vertical and adjacent or synergetic industries)

2. Has a strong, talented management team

3. Has an annual turnover of $1-$10 million

4. Can demonstrate a profitable pipeline

5. Currently delivers large-scale public sector contracts

While we don’t acquire companies in distress, it’s got to be acknowledged that most companies are facing some sort of difficulties right now. If you’ve got profitable work in the pipeline, we’re interested in having a conversation. If you think your company meets the criteria, contact us today.

The deal.

Firstly, let’s be clear: if you approach us we’ll treat your enquiry with the strictest confidence.  Alternatively, if we think your business is right for the group we might approach you, and at this early stage we’ll have a discussion to be sure we’re a good fit for each other.

If your company doesn’t quite fit with what we’re looking for that’s ok, and we’ll quickly let you know that, so you can move on in your journey to find a buyer.

If early conversations show we’re a good fit we’ll move ahead, assessing your business across a range of factors, i.e.

• financial situation

• management team

• risk assessment

• pipeline of work

We’d then be at the stage of agreeing a deal that’s both competitive and realistic in terms of the current market conditions. After that it’s onto the legal part of the process, which can take some time to work through on both sides.

When the deal is right, we won’t mess around. We act quickly to bring the right companies into the group. Every deal is looked at and assessed on a deal by deal basis. We finance deals by deploying funds available through a combination of family offices, HNWIs, commercial debt, existing shareholder funds and private monies.