AFO · Management buyout
Buying out the founder, modelled before the conversation.
Management buyouts — buying out a founder, admitting a management partner, acquiring the business you've been running — are leverage transactions first and equity transactions second. The leverage stack, the vendor note, and the equity injection each carry distinct economics that compound over the five-to-seven years it usually takes to retire the debt.
What makes this use case distinct
- Senior + mezz + vendor + equity modelled as a single leverage stack.
- Covenant headroom matters more than headline rate in MBOs.
- Cap-table outcomes shown under base, upside, downside scenarios.
How this is usually structured
MBO / buyout, in practice.
The senior layer is normally the cheapest dollar in an MBO — 60–75% of the leverage at Prime + 2–5% — but it carries the tightest covenants. The covenant headroom in years one and two matters more than the headline rate; a missed covenant in year two unwinds the deal economics regardless of how cheap the original facility was.
Mezzanine debt typically sits between 75% and 100% of total leverage at 12–18% all-in. The warrant — when there is one — needs to be modelled against management's expected exit valuation, not the entry valuation. The CPA models the cap-table outcomes under realistic, base-case, and downside scenarios so the management team knows what they actually own at year five.
Vendor financing fills the equity-injection gap. The founder takes paper for a portion of the sale price, usually subordinated to the senior and mezz, sometimes with a personal guarantee from the management team, occasionally with an earn-out tied to the post-close projection. The trade-off between vendor-note size and equity injection is the single largest determinant of the management team's eventual return.
3 programs in the catalog · 1 live
Programs that fit mbo / buyout.
Each card links to the program profile. Coming-soon programs are surfaced honestly — the screener routes there with a consultation CTA instead of a self-serve apply link until the integration is wired through.
Cash-flow-underwritten facility from a chartered bank, credit union, or Schedule II lender.
Mezzanine Debt
Coming soonSecond-lien or subordinated debt when senior capacity is exhausted.
Private Credit / Unitranche
Coming soonBespoke debt structures from non-bank private credit funds. Big-ticket only.
Other use cases
Funding a different need?
Each use case has its own structuring conversation. Working capital and equipment look nothing like an MBO; an export ramp doesn’t look like a refinance.
- 2 programs
Real estate
Owner-occupied commercial real estate is a distinct underwriting conversation from pure investment-property lending. The lender is looking at two things at once: the property as collateral, and the operating business as the source of debt service. When both are strong, the structure is straightforward; when one is the weak link, the structure needs to compensate.
Explore the use case
- 10 programs
R&D / innovation
R&D and innovation projects are the single best fit for non-dilutive capital in the Canadian system. Federal refundable tax credits, advisory-plus-funding programs like IRAP, and project-scoped grants like SDTC and the Strategic Innovation Fund stack cleanly with debt or equity — and the CPA who scopes the eligible expenditure pool can dramatically change the project's effective cost.
Explore the use case
- 1 program
Export
Export financing addresses two distinct gaps at once: the up-front cost of entering a new market (research, travel, trade shows, translation, IP protection) and the working-capital cycle of fulfilling export orders (longer DSO, currency exposure, foreign-buyer credit risk). Different instruments cover each gap; the right structure usually layers two or three.
Explore the use case
Match the instrument to the use, not the other way round.
Twenty-minute call. Bring the use of proceeds and a rough sense of where the business stands today; we’ll walk through which instrument or stack fits, what providers will want to see, and how long the engagement takes.