An organised process for the transaction you cannot staff internally.
Asset-backed transactions from USD 100 million. Sell-side, buy-side, capital raising, and succession. The partners who take the mandate run it end to end.
You know the asset better than anyone who will bid on it.
You lack four people free for ten weeks. A written list of the thirty institutions that actually want this asset. Somebody whose only job this quarter is holding a counterparty to a deadline.
That is the entire gap, and it is the only thing we sell. You understand your asset better than we do. We run the ten weeks you cannot.
Four mandate types. One method.
Sell-side
We take a single asset or an aggregated portfolio to a defined universe of strategic and financial buyers, on a controlled timetable, with a written record of every conversation held in your name.
Buy-side and consolidation
We source, approach, and execute acquisitions for firms whose pipeline has outgrown the team assessing it. Where capital binds rather than capacity, we bring the institutional partner into the same conversation.
Capital raising
Institutional capital for assets and vehicles. Joint venture equity, co-investment, and structured capital for situations a lender alone does not solve. Most of our work sits here, because equity constrains most of the pipelines we see, not debt.
Succession and internal transfer
Management buy-outs, partner buy-outs, and generational handovers. Valuation is rarely the hard part. The sequencing, the financing of the incoming party, and the eighteen months of governance around the signature decide these.
Where the value can be stood next to.
Single assets and portfolio aggregations, operating and development stage.
Structure comes before marketing.
The same four hydro assets, priced two ways. Switch between them.
The weekly status, in its actual format.
This document arrives every week for the life of a mandate. Redacted here. On your mandate, the names are the ones you approved.
| Counterparty | Contacted | Response | Effect on price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Week 3 | NDA signed, data room opened | Supportive | |
| Week 3 | Declined, outside current mandate | None | |
| Week 4 | Indicative range submitted | Sets the floor | |
| Week 4 | Site visit requested | Pending |
Ten weeks, described honestly.
Every advisory firm does a version of this work. Very few write it down, so the pitch skips to the outcome. The timings below fit a USD 100 million-plus process. A deadline-driven mandate compresses, and we tell you which weeks give before we start.
We establish what is actually sellable, and what is not.
Before we accept a mandate, we work the asset the way a buyer’s investment committee will. Title and permits. Offtake and contract tenor. The holding and tax structure. The three places the numbers get challenged. A meaningful share of situations fail this week. Hear it from us in week one, not from a bidder in month five.
Structure comes before marketing.
We decide what is for sale. The asset, the platform, the equity, or a partnership in it. The same hydro portfolio priced as four single assets and as one platform makes two different transactions, two buyer universes, and routinely two valuations. This is the most expensive decision in the first month.
The counterparty list, written down and approved by you.
Named institutions, named people, and one line on why each wants this specific asset. You approve the list before we make a single call. Nobody hears your name in the market on a day you did not choose.
A managed process, not a broadcast.
Materials, data room, and a controlled release sequence with deadlines that bind the other side. Every week you receive the same document. Who we contacted, who responded, what they said, and what it does to price. Unglamorous, and the entire job.
We stay past the fee event.
Conditions precedent, consents, and the handover to the next operator. A transaction finishes when the asset runs under its new owner and nobody calls you about it. Not when the fee is paid.
Confidentiality is not a reason to show you nothing.
We publish no client transactions on a website. Under NDA, in a first meeting, we put the following in front of you.
- Named transactions, the counterparty universe we ran, and how many engaged.
- The weekly status documents from a live mandate, redacted. Judge the reporting before you commit to it.
- Two situations we declined, and the specific reason each failed our week-one test.
- References from principals who completed a process with us. One got an outcome they did not want.
Plain answers.
What does a capital advisory mandate at Dark Matter cover?
Sell-side processes, buy-side work, capital raising, and succession for asset-backed transactions from USD 100 million. One partner team runs the process from first analysis to signing.
Which asset classes does Dark Matter advise on?
Real estate, infrastructure, energy, hydroelectric power, biomass, data centres, and wireless towers. Single assets and aggregated portfolios, in Switzerland and internationally.
How long does a full process take?
A typical mandate runs about ten weeks from first call to signing. A fixed external date compresses the plan, and we say which weeks give before we start.
Who runs the mandate day to day?
The partners who accept it. No associate layer learns the asset class on your transaction.
Tell us what is on the desk.
A paragraph is enough. The asset, the approximate size, and the date that matters. A partner reads it, not an associate. Within a week we tell you whether we take the mandate.