I'm in Inverness.

A lot of detailed info there, that's really helpful. It's more complicated than I thought, but I guess I'll get to grips with the concepts as time goes on. The more I get into M&A, the more I see the advantages of JV'ing with you and your team for that reason. Still, it's also useful to know this stuff for my continuing education in M&A.

@Paul Seabridge Very detailed info, much appreciated. I did have a question (or 2) on your point 'It is the ''company' that raises the mortgage, not you, so no deposit is required you are effectively taking 70% of the value of the property out (leaving 30% equity)' >>> By "company", do you mean the company you buy or your SPV? And if I'm understanding you correctly, you would own 70% of the value of the property, but the remaining 30% would be owned by the lender? Also, I wondered what you use as security/bond in a sale & leaseback in a no money down (or rather, 'no money out of your own pocket') leveraged buyout. From my limited experience dealing with sale & leaseback providers, it seems they want a certain number of months' rent as security (maybe 3 to 6 months) perhaps a debenture over the company, and maybe the first month's rent upfront, so I'm thinking the only way to do this without using your own money is to use the money in the company's bank account...is this what you do, or negotiate something else? I suppose the security can be negotiated with the sale & leaseback provider. Lastly, what happens to sale & leaseback lease if you sell the business or the business fails? Commercial leases tend to be quite long, I've never seen one less than 10 years. Presumably this will be written into your lease agreement/contract. I'd guess the lease would simply pass on to the new owner, and you'd negotiate to have no personal liability on the lease payments if the business failed.

This is a very important point, and something I've got stuck with when looking at deals. I believe it comes down to working out the minimum working capital requirement to ensure operations continue smoothly once you take over as new owner, but I am still learning how to calculate this. How many weeks or months' working capital do you suggest is left in the business when your take over to ensure a smooth transition? Obviously the business is going to be bringing in income from day 1 also, which can be used to cover the business's costs, but I'd have thought it will need a safety net of working capital left in the bank too to reduce your risk. So when working out how much cash you need left in the business, do you factor in how much income it'll bring in over the next few weeks/months etc and subtract this from the total working capital needed for the next few weeks/months or just negotiate that the seller leaves the full amount of working capital required for those months in the bank? So I guess you'd look at the net cash flow generated by the business per week or month then use that as a guide? Or net monthly cash flow (by looking at the difference between income received, i.e. cash receipts and what has to be paid out by the business in expenses)? You'd have to factor in any additional debt/finance payments taken on by the business too for its acquisition. So you'd look at the last couple of months' management accounts or the last year's filed accounts so you can work out how much the business needs to cover all costs of sales/good and operating expenses per month, as a guide moving forward? Costs/expenses will likely rise in the year ahead, of course, due to inflation and thus mean there will be rising staff wages, costs of goods etc, so surely this would need to be factored in also, rather than just looking at what costs were in the past. You could do this yourself, or get your accountant or the business's accountant to work this out I guess. And the amount of cash left in the business is added to the purchase price? And whatever cash is taken out by the owner is subtracted from the purchase price?