Nine stages, and a stage does not close while evidence is still moving.
Not a sector scan. One decision you have not been able to close, what you would do differently depending on the answer, and the date it stops being useful.
Rebuilt from the full company register rather than filtered from a sector code, using secondary classifications, holding structures, delegated authority and ownership recursion.
Which businesses are legally live, what the group perimeter actually is, and who holds control — resolved up the chain to the party who can agree a sale.
Peer sets built by operating model before anything is ranked. A broker, an underwriting agency and a scheme franchise are not comparable on one scale.
Filed accounts, disclosure quality, encumbrances, regulatory perimeter, scale and trend — and an explicit statement of what public evidence cannot reach.
A deliberate attempt to kill each surviving thesis, and to kill the recommendation itself. Whatever survives that is what you are told.
Affordability bounds, the walk-away logic, and the transaction structures that make a deal possible when the numbers are not public.
A reviewer outside the work attacks the conclusions before they reach you. Findings that survive are reported; findings that do not are corrected.
What to do in the first 30, 60 and 90 days, in cost order, with the cheapest deal-ending question asked first.
What lands on your desk.
Reconstructed universe
With the route from the full register to the shortlist disclosed, so you can audit what was excluded and why.
Verified candidate set
Legally live entities, ownership resolved, and the businesses that failed verification named with the reason.
Comparable positioning
Like against like, on one measurement basis, with the peer group stated so you can disagree with it.
Candidate states
Advance, conditional, access test, do not pursue, strategic reserve. The states that stop work matter as much as the one that starts it.
Decision economics
Affordability bounds and walk-away discipline, with every input that does not exist named rather than estimated.
Transaction structures
Earn-out, book purchase, hosting, lift-out, minority — how a deal gets done when price cannot be pre-agreed.
Contradictions
The strongest case against each candidate and against the recommendation, kept in rather than tidied out.
Action sequence
30, 60 and 90 days, sequenced by cost and by what would most cheaply end the conversation.
What a sprint is not.
Published because the boundary is part of the product. A supplier who will not say what they do not do is not telling you what they do.
Zeph does not broker, negotiate or execute. The deal is yours.
No target is contacted unless you instruct it, and never unsupervised.
Affordability bounds are not a valuation, and no price is recommended.
Zeph is not authorised by the FCA and gives no regulated financial, legal or investment advice.
If the evidence says no candidate is worth pursuing, that is the finding you receive.
Scope and terms.
Fixed scope
Agreed in writing before work begins: the decision, the deliverable, and the date the answer is needed. Work outside that scope is not assumed.
Scoped to the decision
Engagements are priced against the decision being made rather than by the hour or the page. A bigger report is not a better answer.
Confidential
The existence and content of an engagement are confidential. Zeph publishes no client names, deliverables or decisions.
Your decision
Zeph produces the evidence and the position. Whether to act, and any approach to a third party, remains entirely yours.