Debt advisory for European mid-market companies

1. 01

   Feasibility review

   We review the last two to three years of financial statements, current management accounts, the debt and security position, and the use of proceeds. Within five business days the client has a written view: what is financeable, at roughly what cost and tenor, against what security – and what is not financeable, and why. Where the answer is no, we say so before anyone signs a mandate.

2. 02

   Structure and lender selection

   The structure comes before the lender. Once the instrument, tenor and security package are set, we identify the lenders whose credit policy actually fits the case – sector, size, collateral type, leverage tolerance, jurisdiction. We do not send a file to fifty addresses and see what comes back. A shotgun approach damages the borrower: a company that has been declined by eight lenders is materially harder to finance than one that has been declined by none.

3. 03

   Credit file preparation

   This is where most transactions are won or lost. Each file we submit contains, as standard:

   • Company and ownership structure, beneficial owners, group relationships
   • Historical financials with adjustments explained, not hidden
   • Management accounts and a reconciled current debt schedule
   • Cash flow projections with the assumptions stated and stress-tested
   • The proposed security package with independent valuations where required
   • The use of proceeds and the repayment source, set out explicitly
   • Sector context and the specific risks a credit committee will ask about – addressed in the file rather than left to be discovered
4. 04

   Process and negotiation

   Files go to the selected lenders in parallel, on a defined timetable. Offers are compared on total cost of capital, not headline margin: arrangement and commitment fees, amortisation profile, covenant package, security and guarantee requirements, prepayment terms, cross-default and cross-collateral provisions. We negotiate terms on the client's behalf and hold the process to its timetable.

5. 05

   Closing

   We stay on the file through conditions precedent, valuation, notarial and land-register steps, and drawdown. A mandate is complete when the money is in the account, not when a term sheet is signed.

We put this in writing because institutional counterparties ask, and because the answers are a reason to work with us rather than something to be managed around.

Oferta Finance was founded in Riga in December 2019 by Artūrs Geisari and works from a single office on Tērbatas iela. The firm is built around a team of advisers who each own their mandates end to end – origination, financial review, structuring, lender negotiation and closing – rather than a hand-off between a sales function and a back office. The person who takes the first call is the person who sits in the negotiation.

Latvia is one of the least-leveraged corporate credit markets in the European Union: private sector credit stands at roughly 27.5% of GDP, against a euro area average several times higher. That gap is not a shortage of capital. It is a shortage of prepared borrowers and of anyone whose job it is to put the two sides together properly. That is the business.