DealFlowAgent (DFA)
The Off-Market Register: businesses that are not for sale
Private companies in building services, facilities management and healthcare that are not running a sale process, and would sell to the right buyer at the right price.
Each owner has worked with the DealFlowAgent team to prepare a mandate: a valuation, a written reserve figure and a banded profile. They are not on the market and they are not advertised anywhere. If a verified acquirer meets the reserve, the owner will sit down and talk. Nothing below it reaches them.
If you are a business owner, start here. If you acquire businesses, scroll to Register interest as a buyer.
Ninety seconds. No cost. Nothing published.
Not for sale, but open
No sale process is running. The owner has told us the number at which they would seriously engage.
Prepared in advance
Accounts reviewed, figures banded and verified, reserve agreed in writing before anything is published.
Anonymous until approved
The company is never named here. The name goes to one verified acquirer, with the owner’s written approval.
Why each business is called a project, and what that means
Every mandate is given a project codename, as is standard practice in mergers and acquisitions. It is a working label chosen at random by DealFlowAgent so that a business can be discussed with acquirers, lawyers and funders without the company, its staff or its customers being identified. The codename means nothing on its own. Searching it will not return the company, because the name exists only inside this register and the documents that sit behind it. When you read Project Halyard, read it as the label on a sealed file rather than a brand. The plain description above each project tells you what the business actually does, where it operates and what size it is.
This is not a business-for-sale website
Your company is never named on this website. It is never advertised, never circulated to a list, and never shown to anyone who has not been verified first. Most owners on this register are not selling. They are growing, they intend to keep growing, and they are fielding several unsolicited approaches a month with no way to tell a credible acquirer from a speculative one.
What a public business-for-sale website does
What the Off-Market Register does
Publishes your company name
Publishes a banded, anonymous profile only
Anyone can see it
Acquirers are verified before they see anything
You are visibly on the market
You are not running a sale process, and the page says so
Every enquiry lands on you
Every enquiry lands on us
You find out what you are worth from the first offer
You set the figure in advance and nothing below it reaches you
It stays up until it sells
Each mandate runs for 45 days, then comes off
We stand between the owner and the approach.
How confidentiality works here
Six protections, on every mandate, without exception.
- Your company is never named on this page.
- At any stage. Not in the title, not in the text, not in the illustration. The name is released to one specific acquirer, only after you have approved that specific introduction in writing.
- Every figure is published as a band.
- A precise turnover, a filing date and a region will narrow most UK sectors to a single company. Bands are wide enough to protect your identity, and wide enough that a growing business does not fall out of its own mandate. Every band is checked against filed accounts and management information before it is published.
- Independent checks before anything goes live.
- We test the page for re-identification before it is published. We ask an artificial intelligence model to name the company from the page alone, we sense check it with a senior figure who knows the sector, and we run the bands through Companies House filters to confirm the resulting set of companies is large enough to hide you. If any of those checks points at you, the bands widen or the mandate does not go live.
- Documents are watermarked to the recipient and every view is logged.
- You can see who has opened what, and when. If a document moves, we know whose copy it was.
- Each mandate runs for 45 days.
- Then it comes off the register unless you renew it. A company that sits visible and inactive is a company whose position weakens. We do not allow that to happen to you.
- No public process, ever.
- No advertisement, no open circulation, no third-party syndication, and no presence on any public business-for-sale website. Your staff, customers and suppliers have no way of knowing this page exists.
Who is behind this
The team
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Joe Lewin
Founder, DealFlowAgent
-
Martin Watson
Senior Building Services and Facilities Management Advisor, former chairman in fire and security
-
Nick Barker
Industry Partner, founder of FM Talent Partners
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James Duboullay
Senior M&A Advisor
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Emerson Patton
Sector Specialist, building services and facilities management
-
Kaya Kesici
M&A Advisor, fire safety, security and compliance
Where the acquirer network comes from
We work in one set of sectors and we spend our time in them. Five days exhibiting at Interschutz. The Fire Safety Event. Trade associations, industry boards, and hundreds of direct conversations with acquirers who are actively buying in fire and life safety, HVAC, building services, testing and compliance, and healthcare. That work is done before you arrive.
Track record
22
Completed transactions
13,000+
Acquirers in our network
£500K to £100M
Transaction range
Most sell-side advisers are generalists. We are specialists in your industry.
Businesses currently on the register
All figures banded and checked against filed accounts.
Business acquisition opportunity
Commercial HVAC and mechanical services business, North West England
Anonymised as Project Halyard
Commercial HVAC and mechanical services business, North West England
Codename Project Halyard
Commercial HVAC and mechanical services across the North West
Revenue band on a nil to £25M scale: £12M to £16M
£14M to £18M
Shown to illustrate the format and level of detail. Request access to see current live mandates.
45-day window
Business acquisition opportunity
Lift and escalator maintenance business, the Midlands
Anonymised as Project Ridgeway
Lift and escalator maintenance business, the Midlands
Codename Project Ridgeway
Lift and escalator maintenance across the Midlands
Revenue band on a nil to £25M scale: £6M to £9M
£12M to £16M
Shown to illustrate the format and level of detail. Request access to see current live mandates.
45-day window
Business acquisition opportunity
Private-weighted dental group, South West England and South Wales
Anonymised as Project Sable
Private-weighted dental group, South West England and South Wales
Codename Project Sable
Private-weighted dental group across the South West and South Wales
Revenue band on a nil to £25M scale: £9M to £13M
£16M to £21M
Shown to illustrate the format and level of detail. Request access to see current live mandates.
45-day window
Business acquisition opportunity
Fire safety, compliance and building fabric contractor, England
Anonymised as Project Marlowe
Fire safety, compliance and building fabric contractor, England
Codename Project Marlowe
Fire safety, compliance and building fabric works across England
Revenue band on a nil to £25M scale: £11M to £19M
£14M to £24M
45-day window
Mandates on the register
4
Combined revenue represented
£38M to £57M
Acquirers in our network
13,000+
Mandate window
45 days
What a reserve figure is
A reserve, as at auction. The owner sets it in writing before the mandate goes live. It is private, it is disclosed to verified acquirers at non-disclosure agreement stage, and it is a threshold for engagement rather than an asking price or a cap.
The four gates
How an acquirer moves from first contact to the company being named.
Acquirer verification
Funding, sector experience, prior completions and decision authority are confirmed first.
No company information released
NDA and financial pack
A short non-disclosure agreement releases the figures, the reserve and the contract base.
Identity withheld
Owner approval
The owner reads a written profile of the acquirer and decides. Only then is the company named.
Owner's written approval required
Indicative offer
Acquirers who meet the reserve are invited to offer. More than one qualifying, we run a process.
Reserve must be met
Who we accept
What we look for
- £2.5M to £30M of revenue, most mandates £6M to £18M
- Profitable, or within 10% of breakeven with a clear path
- A meaningful base of contracted or repeat revenue
- Essential services: fire and life safety, HVAC and mechanical, lift and escalator, electrical, security, facilities management, testing and compliance, and healthcare
- An owner willing to set a reserve
What we decline
- Sectors where we do not already hold qualified acquirers
- Owners unwilling to set a reserve figure
- Figures that cannot survive the re-identification checks
- Businesses already represented on an exclusive basis
We decline more than we accept. That is what makes the register worth an acquirer's attention.
If you own a business
Start with the valuation. Ninety seconds, no cost, and nothing you enter is published anywhere. If the result is interesting we will talk about whether a mandate makes sense for you. There is no obligation to sell, and no obligation to sell with us.
If you acquire businesses
Verification takes under a working day. On approval you receive the financial pack, the reserve and the contract base analysis under a non-disclosure agreement.
Questions owners ask
All figures on the Off-Market Register are published as bands and are verified against filed accounts and management information. Nothing on this page constitutes an offer or an invitation to treat. DealFlowAgent (DFA) is a trading name of BTB Holdings Ltd, registered in England and Wales.
