Prepare early. Understand the numbers. Reduce surprises.
Hands-on transaction support for owners preparing to sell and for buyers evaluating an acquisition — from exit readiness and normalized EBITDA through diligence response, structure analysis, and closing.
- Sell-Side & Transaction Readiness
- Diligence & Execution
- Buy-Side
You may recognize this
You are considering a sale in the next one to three years and want to know what needs fixing now.
You have received an indication of interest and are not sure how to evaluate it.
A buyer's quality-of-earnings team is coming and your financials have never been examined that way.
You are acquiring a business and need independent analysis of what you are buying.
Working capital, add-backs, or the earnings quality of your own business are unclear to you.
Your advisers are in place, but nobody owns the financial workstream day to day.
What the engagement covers.
Sell-Side & Transaction Readiness
- Exit-readiness assessments
- Financial cleanup ahead of a sale process
- Normalized EBITDA and adjustment schedules
- Historical and projected financial analysis
- Valuation analysis
- Deal positioning and financial storytelling
- Buyer-material and management-presentation support
- Data-room preparation and organization
Diligence & Execution
- Quality-of-earnings preparation and response support
- Buyer diligence management and financial Q&A
- Working-capital analysis and peg discussion support
- Evaluation of indications of interest and letters of intent
- Deal-structure and net-proceeds analysis
- Coordination with legal, tax, accounting, and other transaction professionals
- Support through signing and closing
Buy-Side
- Acquisition screening and target analysis
- Financial and operational diligence
- Valuation and return modeling
- Purchase-price and financing scenarios
- Working-capital and cash-flow analysis
- Deal-structure evaluation
- Integration planning
- Post-close reporting and performance tracking
What changes.
A financial record that a diligence team can verify quickly, rather than one that raises new questions each week.
Adjustments and add-backs supported by documentation before a buyer asks for it.
A clear-eyed view of what an offer actually delivers after structure, working capital, fees, and taxes.
Fewer late-stage surprises — the kind that reopen price.
On the buy side, a defensible view of earnings quality and returns before you commit.
Founder experience across the transaction lifecycle
Chris Wolever has led and supported sell-side M&A processes representing more than $1.5 billion in aggregate transaction value across prior corporate and advisory roles. His experience spans financial preparation, normalized performance analysis, valuation, diligence, deal-structure evaluation, negotiation support, and coordination through signing and closing.
- Aggregate transaction experience
$1.5B+
Aggregate transaction experience
Sell-side processes led and supported in prior roles.
Source
Represents aggregate transaction value associated with transactions in which Chris participated across prior corporate and advisory roles. It does not represent transactions completed by Wolever Advisory. Responsibilities and level of involvement varied by transaction. No former employer or client endorsement is implied.
Why operating-finance experience matters in a transaction
A sale process is not only a financial exercise. It runs alongside a business that still has to perform, and most of the leverage sits in work done before a buyer ever appears.
Financial preparation begins before launch
The record a buyer examines is built months earlier. Cleanup done under deadline is cleanup a buyer notices.
Credible forecasts support valuation
A projection is only worth what its assumptions can withstand. Forecasts that reconcile to history hold up; forecasts that do not become a discount.
Clean reporting reduces diligence friction
Every unexplained variance invites a wider examination. A reliable close is the cheapest form of diligence defence.
Normalized EBITDA must be supportable
Adjustments survive when a stranger can reproduce them from the ledger — not when they are argued well.
Working-capital dynamics affect proceeds
The peg moves real money at closing, and it is set from data most owners have never tracked monthly.
Management must keep operating
A process consumes the same people who run the business. Someone has to own the financial workstream so performance does not slip mid-diligence.
Structure matters alongside headline price
Escrow, earnout, rollover, and net working capital determine what an offer actually delivers after the headline number.
A defined sequence, with a clear endpoint.
- 01
Assess readiness
Examine the financials the way a buyer's diligence team will. Identify what will be questioned, what is unsupported, and what should be corrected now.
- 02
Prepare the record
Build normalized earnings and supporting schedules, organize the data room, and assemble the historical and projected analysis behind the story.
- 03
Analyze the deal
Model the structure, working capital, financing, and proceeds so the decision is made on economics rather than headline price.
- 04
Support execution
Manage the financial workstream through diligence and Q&A, coordinating with counsel, tax, and other advisers through signing and closing.
Thinking about a transaction?
Early conversations are confidential and carry no obligation. The most useful ones tend to happen well before a process starts.