Helping business operators and owners navigate the world of debt with Tom McGhie, Director at Fulcra Financial

This year, the Australian EtA and Search Fund community is looking forward to its first big event for the region. The EtA Forum (www.etaforum.com.au) will be held in Manly Beach in Sydney, on Friday 16th September.

In this episode, I speak to Tom McGhie from Fulcra Financial, an advisory firm focusing on providing Debt Solutions for Australian businesses and their owners. I've had the pleasure of working with Tom on a couple of deals over the last couple of years. And one of the things that I find really valuable about the process and approach that he takes is the ability to translate from the business owner and operator to the bank.

Tom has been involved in the search community as it's grown and has been a supporter of a number of transactions on that front. He will also be joining us at the ETA forum next month in September in Manly will be sitting on a panel and contributing his expertise and his experience to that conversation on the day.

Please stay tuned as we count down the days and be sure to yell out if you have any questions or comments to offer, so we can make the EtA Forum a great event for all involved.

Tickets available at: www.etaforum.com.au

Connect with Pete: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peteseligman/

Connect with Tom: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tommcghie/

What we discussed:

03:13 Tom gives us an overview into his background and career to date and how he came to help clients navigate the world of debt

10:16 Tom tells us how he first came across deals in the search fund and eta space and how that has evolved over the last couple of years.

15:25 Pete asks Tom about what he is seeing coming to the table at the moment and what he sees as the main characteristics of those deals from a debt perspective.

20:07 Tom discusses how extra layers of credit value are resonating inside the banks.

Quotes:

Capability across the industry has shifted a lot, the focus of how banking works has shifted a lot, arguably, positively or negatively. But ultimately, the navigation from a customer's perspective has not gotten any easier. And I have to say that there's no one in there trying to do a bad job or trying to make life difficult for a customer or a business owner.

There's definitely that interplay of real life experiences required to understand how things practically pay play out in the real world.

The absolute first element to these transactions, which is so important is, if I kind of think back to sort of our five C's kind of framework, which, I guess is quite a common framework, but essentially, character being the top right, we're dealing with somebody that has got good experience.

That ability to be coached, seek advice, seek input, is the fundamental foundation of what makes for us a bankable transaction.

We want in the world of debt, to look back in history and say, that's doable, it's repeatable. And it's going to happen again, and simply you structure debt based on proven business models that essentially are all going to repeat and can be repeated, but most importantly, will repeat.

It does really start with that commercial element and lining up, then all the other pieces around it, not limited to what I've just described, to make a transaction really work. So really thinking about how is this business going to perform in a downturn, perhaps that we might have, or, ultimately that they're going to grow this business in all weather.

But I think it's going to be really interesting over the next few years to see how that appetite the combination of appetite and capability from the banks to be funding these deals, which kind of sit in that gap like they're too big to have a simplistic approach, which can work very, very well for much smaller deals.