What this is

No new concepts. You are now the deal team, presenting Meridian to the partners who control whether the fund's money actually gets committed.

The proposal, as it stands

  • Entry: £160m EV, 8× £20m EBITDA
  • Financing: £96m debt, £64m equity
  • Plan: grow EBITDA to £28m by year 5, largely from the pricing and retention improvements named in Lesson 5's thesis
  • Base case: ~2.3-2.5× MOIC, high-teens IRR (Lesson 22)

Entry EV

£160m

Entry multiple

8x

Debt

£96m

Equity

£64m

Base-case IRR

~18%

Your job

  1. Challenge the assumptions, is the 8× entry multiple actually justified given the comparable-company concerns raised in Lesson 14? Is the EBITDA growth plan realistic, or does it assume the pricing change lands perfectly with zero customer pushback?
  2. Decide whether you'd approve this entry price, or push for a lower one, and be able to say why.
  3. Run at least one downside scenario from Lesson 23 against this specific deal and see whether the return still clears a bar you'd consider acceptable (most funds target something in the mid-to-high teens IRR).
  4. Make the call: invest, or pass.

There's no single correct answer here, a reasonable committee could approve this deal, or could push back hard on the pricing-improvement assumption specifically, since it's the least-proven part of the whole thesis. What matters is that your answer names which assumption you'd want tested further before signing, not just a gut "yes" or "no."

Try this yourself

  • Re-run the case assuming the pricing improvement in Meridian’s thesis only delivers half of what’s planned. Does the deal still clear a mid-teens IRR bar?
  • Argue the entry multiple down from 8× to 7× and see how much that alone improves MOIC, independent of any operational change.
  • Decide what single piece of further diligence you'd demand before moving from “conditional yes” to “yes.”

If you can build and defend a full go/no-go recommendation this way, you're ready for the Advanced tier, starting at Lesson 25.