External Financing Techniques for Entrepreneurs

This course is designed to assist SME managers and Corporate Executives to raise finance from third party institutions including loans from banks or equity investments from private equity funds. The course therefore explains and develops the factors that external financiers look for from corporate management in providing debt financing or direct equity investments. It will allow the corporate manager to understand the rationale behind the needs and requests of bankers and investors in providing finance and will allow the manager to ‘speak the language of finance’ with their potential external financiers.

This course has been designed by former bankers and investors who are also SME owner managers. As they have been on both sides of the table in financing companies or projects, they are able to share a wealth of experience in finance raising for debt for long term company development as well as the short term financing of operations and working capital and in raising equity finance from potential investors. The course trainer will therefore impart practical advice and work through applied case studies to demonstrate how to present the business case for a finance raise with a bank or investor in order to enhance the development of companies.

Having completed the course the delegates will have a detailed understanding of:

• The SMEs ability to finance its current debt obligations for the medium term and for working capital finance through free cash flow and its Debt Service Coverage Ratio
• Assessing how the company can minimise capital maintenance expenditure during a crisis period but the importance of ongoing investment
• Reviewing how to generate and forecast realistic cash flow generation from its existing activities through financial modelling
• Modelling improvements in cash flow generation through working capital management
• Understanding the interests of bankers in preserving their loan exposure
• Understanding why continued payment of interest is essential to the interests of the banker and why compounding interest into a deferred repayment is difficult for the bank to approve
• The importance of maintaining transparency of discussions with the company’s financiers about any problems that the company is facing
• Calculate the company’s working capital need (working investment) using the Asset Conversion Cycle and negotiating working capital financing with banks

Understanding how discounted cash flow forecasts are used in company valuation and reviewing other popular methods of company valuation for negotiations with investors