A well-calibrated financing means five years of room to manoeuvre. A poorly calibrated financing means five years of constraint. There is not much in between: dilution chosen or endured, shareholders’ agreement read or not, liquidity clause negotiated or ignored.

The financing structure chosen today shapes a company’s trajectory for the next five years. Between dilution, debt and hybrid instruments, the right call depends on the project, on the principal’s sensitivity to sharing the capital, on the state of the market. Arcadia Partners advises mid-market principals on their financing strategy, well beyond simple bank intermediation.

The first task is to build the financing narrative: what story the company tells, what project it finances, what trajectory is foreseeable over five years, what risks are taken on. This document makes the difference between a raise that closes at the expected terms and a raise that happens in haste with a discount on the valuation.

We then identify the right financial partners: mid-market funds, specialised investment banks, quasi-equity investors, sophisticated family offices. The list is short, qualified, and each investor is approached individually. We negotiate the term sheets alongside the principal, paying particular attention to the clauses that are rarely negotiated: post-investment governance, liquidity clauses, drag-along, tag-along, anti-dilution.