Corporate and Commercial
Owner Managed Businesses
Ryan D'Souza
December 2025
Thinking about what’s next for your fast-growth business? For many founders, “selling up” sounds like throwing in the towel. But in the right hands, it’s the start of something bigger.
We’ve teamed up with our long-standing client, Ansor, a professional investment business that has a proven track record of successfully buying ambitious SMEs in the UK (and overseas) to develop them into market-leading businesses through their buy-and-build strategy.
We asked Ansor what they look for when choosing SMEs to join their growth journey. They came back with five key characteristics that make a business stand-out to them and what you could consider as you grow your business.
- SMEs Operating in Fragmented Sectors with Strong Tailwinds
Ansor’s sweet spot is focusing on sectors where the market is fragmented and ripe for consolidation. They look for room to scale through organic growth and acquire the best of the existing businesses to bring together a true market leader. Their sector coverage is across but not limited to healthcare, business services, specialist manufacturing and technical services to the built environment – all sectors supported by demand trends and persistent, macro-level forces that support growth for the long-term.
Therefore, if you’re in a niche with lots of small players and strong demand, you could be sitting on a goldmine. Scale is the name of the game.
- Excellent Culture and Values
Businesses with a clear sense of purpose and strong internal culture stand out. Ansor looks for companies whose values align with theirs; businesses that are committed to building something enduring. Ansor recognises that culture and values help build and maintain high performing teams.
Your culture isn’t just an HR buzzword. It’s a growth asset. Document it, live it, and make sure it shines through.
- Ambitious Management Teams with Clear Succession Pathways
People are at the heart of every successful business. Whether it’s a founder-led company with leadership ready to continue the journey, or a business where the owners are preparing for succession, Ansor partner with teams that are open to collaboration and growth. For those retiring, Ansor bring the support and structure needed to build out leadership, promote from within and ensure continuity. For those who are just getting started, Ansor are supportive and encouraging to help scale the business. It’s a team sport. What is good for the leadership team is good for everyone.
If you’re thinking about stepping back, plan early. If you’re gearing up for growth, show you’ve got the right team and the right mindset.
- Strong Underlying Profitability and Growth Potential
Ansor have discovered that there are desirable financial characteristics indicating strong fundamentals and competitive positions. These include stable and high-quality revenue streams, attractive margins, and reliable, repeatable cash flows. Beyond fundamental financial stability, they seek signs of growth – whether organic or through identifiable levers that can be unlocked together post-acquisition.
Healthy numbers matter. But so does a story about where you’re headed. Can you show both?
- Value Creation Potential
Ansor’s model is to combine SMEs together to create exciting high growth, market leading businesses of the future. They are experienced in creating and executing phased integration strategies to improve and join up the thinking on key business areas such as sales and marketing, procurement, service delivery, geographic expansion and systems to provide the highest quality of data to scale up.
If you’ve got room to improve and scale, that’s opportunity knocking. Think beyond today, what could your business look like in five years with the right backing?
Ready to explore what’s next?
If you are thinking about next steps and any of the above business attributes seem familiar, why not take a look at Ansor’s current portfolio companies here: https://www.ansor.co.uk/our-companies/
Read more about the work we do with Ansor to facilitate fast-growth, scalable businesses here or to understand how we can support you please contact Ryan D’Souza.
