My personal findings - Adam Giansiracusa from Oryx Legacy Ltd

Key Takeaways:

Thesis

The UAE is fundamentally a young country, having developed extensively in the past 40 years, with 90% of the population being expatriate. The main reasons for people to sell as a result are A) an expat who wants to relocate back to their home market, or B) an owner has multiple businesses and wants to simplify their lives or reinvest into their core asset. This differs heavily from Western dynamics where sellers are older and retiring.

Building a pipeline in these circumstances thus requires going very deep with a defined thesis and talking to practically everyone we can get in touch with inside a sector. While it worked with our initial sector thesis, it was time intensive. It made a major difference in building credibility with sellers and understanding industry dynamics, however.

Introducers

The UAE has very few quality M&A advisors / brokers, which has meant a lot of deal sourcing needs to be proprietary. On the other hand, owners here, while willing to sell, are unaware of how to do so and are still young enough that the immediate pressure to do so isn’t there. They are as a result often difficult to pin down absent an intermediary of some kind, even informal introducers. 

 In our initial target sector, we had introductions come through four different individuals / groups. We also had a lot of success with introductions through a sector-focused M&A advisor for our target industry, who had built up relationships and could connect us widely.

Capital competition

We have focused on business models that succeeded in Western markets and applied them in the UAE, the logic being that we then are only focused on underwriting market and execution risk, rather than thesis risk.

With the amount of non-local capital interested in the UAE nowadays however, this has gotten harder. We’re seeing increasing competition around those core ideas, which will require broadening from more well-established thesis ideas in other markets. 

Roll-up deal flow 

One tension in our initial strategy, which was a roll-up, was how aggressively to push M&A early in the process. On the one hand, it helped provide confidence that we had a pathway to build sufficient scale and helped identify key “best of” ideas we could pull from different entities. On the other hand, it did materially increase time and effort needed on any one deal.

While the process was certainly helpful, pushing on multiple transactions at once to try to build that confidence in reality probably injected more complexity than necessary.

Debt challenge

The UAE has well-documented challenges around debt and the reality is, under $5M in EBITDA, the only debt option is a family office private credit lender. While this system is improving and there are major government efforts to unlock SME lending, they are still at early stages.

The standard acquisition due diligence focuses on annual DSCR. Walker Deibel's corrective is simple: annual averages hide monthly pain, and monthly pain is what kills deals. A business can show clean EBITDA and healthy trailing coverage ratios while still having one or two months that can't service the debt, at which point the new owner becomes the lender.

The practical test he runs is the Minimum Viable Month: can the weakest month in the trailing twelve still clear 1.2x debt coverage? If not, the business isn't funding itself. You are.

Three implications for ETA underwriting. First, map cash flow month by month before closing, not annually, every business has a worst month and you need to find it before the lender does. Second, seasonal troughs, late payers, and lump-sum expenses should be assumed, not stress-tested as edge cases. Third, a CIM, broker summary, or even audited accounts can look pristine while the working capital cycle turns the incoming CEO into a personal line of credit in quarter one.

The income statement tells you what the business earns. The monthly cash conversion cycle tells you whether you can own it.

Reference

"The Cash Flow Trap That Breaks New Business Owners," Walker Deibel, LinkedIn / Build Wealth newsletter, March 11, 2026.

Log Bridge Ventures – NL

Erik Elbers has launched Log Bridge Ventures with the goal of acquiring and operating a single small business for the long term. He is actively searching and focused on preserving the legacy and team of the businesses he approaches. (Link)

Dorim Transmission – FR

Raphael Berger has launched Dorim Transmission, targeting the acquisition of a French B2B services SME. The long-term ambition is to build a durable B2B services group. (Link)

Maruna Capital – ES

Maruna Capital (Javier Marroquín Ruiz-Navarro) acquired 100% of Escuela Europea de Coaching (EEC), an executive coaching institution founded in Madrid with ~€5M revenue, 170+ corporate clients and a presence across 15 countries. (Link)

Insights from: an Advisor and Investor, Dr Gernot Eisinger (INSEAD ETA and Search Funds Podcast)

Dr. Gernot Eisinger (founder of Afinum) breaks down what actually drives success in ETA and search funds as the space gets more competitive. Drawing on a career spanning chemicals, strategy consulting, and private equity, and two decades advising SME succession, he explains the traits he sees in strong searchers: disciplined management ability, active listening, and real empathy for the seller’s perspective (not just price and terms). The discussion also covers how to identify “ideal” targets, how to navigate the messy realities of the search phase, and what makes investors lean in when many searchers look similar. The big shift: treat ETA as a relationship-and-credibility game and design with the exit in mind much earlier than first-time buyers usually do. Spotify Link

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