What Is an M&A Department as a Service?

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 resource to manage it is not.

This is the problem that Larzon Capital was built to solve.

The gap that most SMEs fall into

When a company with EUR 5 million to EUR 50 million in turnover faces a significant M&A event, it typically has three options.

The first is to manage the process internally. This usually means the CEO, CFO, or a senior board member takes on the transaction alongside their existing responsibilities. M&A processes run six to nine months from initial contact to signing. Across that period, the management attention required is substantial. Due diligence, negotiation, legal coordination, valuation work, and stakeholder management do not run themselves. A CEO who is managing an acquisition is not running the business, and the business notices.

The second option is to hire a traditional investment bank or M&A boutique. For larger transactions, this works. For mid-market and lower mid-market deals, it often does not. The economics of advisory fees at smaller deal sizes do not attract the senior attention that a transaction deserves. The partner who wins the mandate is frequently not the person who runs the process.

The third option is to do nothing. To set the opportunity aside because the internal bandwidth is not there and the cost of external advisors feels disproportionate. This is the option most SMEs end up taking, and it is the most expensive of the three.

What an outsourced M&A department actually does

Larzon Capital operates as an embedded M&A resource for companies that need serious capability without the overhead of a full-time hire or the cost structure of an investment bank.

In practice, this means we take end-to-end responsibility for the M&A process. We develop the acquisition thesis or exit strategy, identify and approach targets or buyers, run the initial conversations, manage the due diligence process, coordinate legal and financial advisors, support valuation and negotiation, and stay in the room through to signing and closing. The management team is involved at the decisions that require them and kept clear of the process work that does not.

We work across four areas. Buy-side M&A, where we help companies identify, approach, and acquire targets. Sell-side M&A, where we prepare and run the process for founders and shareholders considering an exit. Buy-and-build strategy, where we design and execute multi-acquisition growth programmes for companies and their investors. And fundraising, where we support businesses in raising growth capital from the right investors at the right terms.

What makes the model work in practice

The difference between an outsourced M&A department and a traditional advisor is accountability and continuity. A traditional advisor is engaged for a transaction. We are engaged for the strategy of the company and the outcome.

Across 170 transactions in 25 years, including senior M&A roles at KONE Corporation, where M&A ran at a rate of 30 acquisitions per year, and Consti Group, where I led 13 acquisitions and was preparing the company to IPO, I have been on every side of the negotiation table. As the founding CEO of Invesdor, I also experienced this from the entrepreneur's seat, acquiring Finnest, an Austrian crowdfunding platform, and integrating a DACH business into a Nordic group. As the acquiring company, as the selling company, and as the advising banker for both. That range matters in practice because M&A processes regularly involve moments where knowing how the other side thinks determines what you do next.

Larzon Capital is based in canton Zug, Switzerland. Our focus is the Nordic-DACH corridor: Finnish companies looking to acquire in Switzerland, Germany, or Austria; DACH companies looking at Finnish or Nordic targets; and cross-border processes in either direction. This corridor is underserved by the existing advisory market. Most boutiques are domestically anchored. Very few have genuine operating experience on both sides.

Who this is relevant for

The model works best for companies in three situations.

Companies planning their first acquisition, where the internal team has no prior transaction experience and needs both the capability and the confidence to execute well. Companies running a buy-and-build programme, where multiple transactions need to be managed in parallel without the business losing operational focus. And founders or shareholders approaching a sale, who want a process that is properly prepared and competitively run, but whose transaction size does not attract the full attention of a large bank.

If your company turnover is between EUR 5 million and EUR 50 million and an M&A event is somewhere on the horizon, the question is not whether you can afford external support. The question is whether you can afford to manage it without any.

That is what we built Larzon Capital to address.

Lasse Mäkelä is the Founder of Larzon Capital, a cross-border M&A advisory firm based in Switzerland, focused on the Nordic-DACH corridor.