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By Lasse Mäkelä, Founder, Larzon Capital Most M&A processes start in the wrong place. Bain and Company's 2025 research found that only 30 percent of strategic acquisitions met or exceeded their internal financial targets. The same research revealed something equally striking: the top quartile of acquirers by value creation walked away from four to six deals for every deal they signed. The bottom quartile signed roughly 80 percent of the deals they entered exclusivity on. That

By Lasse Mäkelä, Founder, Larzon Capital I did not have an office when I started. Consti Yhtiöt had just made its first acquisition, Koja Yhtiöt, a building technology company that would later become Consti Talotekniikka. I joined as the first employee of Consti Yhtiöt Oy, carrying the title of Head of M&A and, for a period, CFO as well. My desk was in the back room of Intera Partners' offices in Helsinki. The company I was there to build existed mostly on paper, a thesis and

By Lasse Mäkelä, Founder, Larzon Capital If you are reading this from a summer cottage somewhere in Finland, you are probably in one of the few genuinely quiet moments your year offers. The phone is slower. The inbox can wait. There is water nearby and nowhere to be. That is actually a valuable state of mind for a business owner. Not because you should be working, but because distance from the day-to-day is exactly when the important questions become easier to hear. I have sp

By Lasse Mäkelä, Founder, Larzon Capital Most growing companies reach a point where M&A starts to make strategic sense. A competitor comes up for sale. A bolt-on acquisition would accelerate the product roadmap by three years. A founder approaches about a deal, or a larger player sends signals about a potential exit conversation. When that moment arrives, most SMEs discover they are not equipped to handle it well. The deal is real. The opportunity is real. The internal resour

By Lasse Mäkelä, Founder, Larzon Capital There are approximately 74,000 Finnish entrepreneurs over the age of 55. Most of them built their businesses over decades. Many have never seriously considered what happens next. The data says they should. According to Finnvera's latest market review, there are nearly three times as many Finnish SMEs planning to sell within the next five years as there are companies actively looking to buy. The Omistajanvaihdosbarometri, a national sur

By Lasse Mäkelä, Founder, Larzon Capital Finland rarely appears on the acquisition radar of Swiss or German strategic buyers. It sits at the top of Europe's digital performance rankings, produces some of the continent's most skilled technology professionals, and offers acquisition multiples broadly in line with the DACH average. But the number of DACH buyers actively competing for quality Finnish targets remains small. That combination is not going to last. I have spent the b

Most Finnish business owners who consider selling their company imagine the process being roughly the same regardless of where the buyer comes from. You prepare the numbers, you present the business, someone makes an offer, you negotiate, and you close. That framing is not wrong, but it misses something important. When the buyer is Swiss or German, several things work differently. Once you understand how, the differences often work in your favour. I have worked on both sides

By Lasse Mäkelä, Founder, Larzon Capital Every buy-and-build strategy looks brilliant in the investment committee deck. A platform company, a fragmented market, a tidy list of attractive add-ons, and a thesis on multiple arbitrage so elegant it almost apologises for itself. On paper, the maths is borderline embarrassing. Then year two happens. For the first part of my career, at Investment Banking, I looked at acquisitions the way most advisors do: as transactions. Valuations

As of summer 2025, I’ve officially wrapped up a rewarding 3½-year journey at Multitude AG — a period filled with M&A, strategy, investor...

I am excited to update you on the first active quarter inside Larzon Capital. The start has been active and busy, but we are moving...

17 March 2021 Dear friends, Here is a short note regarding the changes in my career and the ways how I can serve you better in the...