Hi all, there's a specific equity structure that I have seen mentioned repeatedly as a popular way for searchers to maintain control of the company, but having trouble understanding what it would be called. I'll describe below through a hypothetical scenario and hoping you can tell me what to call this (any help would be greatly appreciated!):
Let's say the acquisition price is $10 million. Investors contribute $1 million (10% of purchase price—**Edit: remainder financed via senior and seller debt**). Each $10k represents 1 preferred unit. Each preferred unit comes with a 0.2% share of common equity. Thus:
- Investors as a whole receive a 1.0x liquidation preference on their $1 million investment
- Investors receive a 10% preferred dividend
- Investors receive a total of 20% of common equity
- Searcher retains 80% of common equity
What is this financing structure called where the searcher immediately "vests" into 80% of the common equity because only 20% is given away to the preferred shareholders? It doesn't seem to be any of the typical structures you'd see on Investopedia or similar.
It seems apparent that it's some kind of non-convertible preferred (where the investors are limited to the 20% of common equity that they start with). But it seems like it's neither participating nor non-participating.
- Is this just non-convertible non-participating preferred but WITH a common equity component added in? Seems like not, because non-convertible non-participating preferred alone would typically not involve investors having any common equity. They'd simply have a liquidation preference and preferred dividend.
- I don't think this would be called non-convertible participating preferred either: with participating preferred, investors would generally not have a common equity share until liquidation (they'd take a pro rata share of the remaining capital after their liquidation preference is paid out). And then in that liquidation scenario, they'd end up with more than 20% of the common equity share after their liquidation is paid out, right? Because in this scenario, the searcher usually only vests into 10-30% of the common equity.
What can I call this equity structure where investors receive liq. pref. and 20% of common equity?
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by a searcher from Massachusetts Institute of Technology - MIT Sloan School of Management
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