Buying A Bankrupt 117 Year Old Manufacturer

The Deal

Key Takeaways

• 1Avoid acquiring businesses in active bankruptcy proceedings on first acquisition attempt; bankruptcies introduce supplier uncertainty, employee trauma, customer hesitation, and hidden liabilities difficult to assess from outside
• 2Do not finance acquisitions solely with friends and family capital, as business failure destroys personal relationships; use unrelated investors or institutional capital instead
• 3Do not acquire in unfamiliar geographies far from home base without established infrastructure; distance creates coordination overhead, family strain, and operational blindness
• 4Manufacturing businesses require 2-3x longer timelines and 2-3x higher costs than initial projections; multiply all estimates by three before committing capital
• 5Minimum sustainable acquisition size for owner-operator model with manufacturing is 5 million EUR revenue (preferably 10+ million) to generate cash sufficient to hire senior operational partners