Financing a buy-in management buyout (BIMBO) with day‑one working capital

Industry: Services

Product: Asset Based Lending with GGS top-up

Facility size: £4.6m

The company

This group comprises three independently run businesses providing commercial clients with essential services including contract cleaning, security, recruitment and facilities management. The firm has built a reputation for fast, reliable services for their customers.

The founder was approached by an external party with a complementary business. The proposal: bring all four companies under one brand and complete a transaction that allowed the founder to retire, while positioning the business for expansion and growth.

To ensure continuity and retain the expertise already in place, the deal structure evolved from a management buy‑out (MBO) to a buy‑in management buyout (BIMBO), bringing together the existing leadership team with incoming knowledge and experience from a complementary sector.

The challenge

With an experienced leadership team and ambitious plans, the new group needed a funding partner that could provide immediate working capital and support a multi‑entity restructure from day one.

Bringing four established businesses together into a single specialist brand required a facility that would:

• Fund the deal without putting undue pressure on day‑to‑day cash flow
• Provide day‑one working capital to integrate systems (finance, payroll and CRM), align supplier terms and maintain service continuity
• Flex with trading, scaling with larger client contracts
• Preserve headroom to invest in growth

This type of transaction called for a lender with experience of complex group structures and the ability to deliver a tailored, flexible funding package.

The solution

Close Brothers Invoice Finance structured a tailored asset-based lending (ABL) solution, combining invoice finance and with the Growth Guarantee Scheme (GGS) top‑up and a cash flow loan, together delivering a £4.6m funding package.

ABL lets businesses combine invoice finance with additional borrowing secured against the value of physical assets, such as inventory, plant and machinery, and property. In this way ABL can unlock higher levels of capital, which can be particularly effective for strategic activity like acquisitions, where funding is needed not only for the BIMBO, but also to support integration and future growth.

Alongside the ABL facility, a GGS top‑up was used to unlock further liquidity. GGS is a government-backed scheme designed to improve the terms available to borrowers, supporting access to finance for UK companies as they look to invest and grow. Adding a GGS element helped strengthen the overall package and provide additional headroom at a critical point in the group’s transition.

Given the planned restructure and the operational complexity of combining multiple trading entities, Close Brothers Invoice Finance provided dedicated, on-site support to build a detailed understanding of how the firm would operate after completion. That insight was integral to shaping a cohesive funding structure that supported the initial transaction, provided working capital from day one, and had the capacity to scale in line with the new group’s ambitions.

The results

With the facility in place, the management team had the resources and confidence to unify the businesses under one specialist brand, while protecting day‑to‑day service delivery.

The additional headroom has supported further contract wins and strengthened the group’s proposition for commercial clients, consolidating cleaning, security and temporary recruitment under a single provider.

And with invoice finance continuing as the core funding platform, the facility flexes in line with sales, supporting ongoing growth well beyond the acquisition.