PepTalks is a training and membership community built specifically for leaders in private equity – backed businesses. With about 300 CEOs in their membership, they share knowledge and support from experienced ‘honorary’ members. Between them, they have 234 rounds of private equity ownership under their belts. As an advisory member, Stonehage Fleming, is one of eight service providers – all experts in their fields – who specialise in working with private equity-backed companies and provide their experience and expertise, to the PepTalks community. Susie Hillier, Head of Wealth Planning at Stonehage Fleming helps members understand how they should prepare for exit; planning for the incoming wealth and managing it when it arrives. We caught up with PepTalks Founder and Managing Director, Sam Smith, who established the business in 2019.
What are the main challenges for private equity investee leadership teams?
The main thing to note is that any institutional money is invested with the expectation that investors will ultimately receive double or triple their money back. That puts the company on a completely different playing field. Navigating life with a new independent chair and or a board of directors made up of investors can be very challenging. It transforms the dynamic, the pressure and the rhythms of a business.
What do you focus on when coaching C-suite teams?
There are four key areas: understanding how to create value for their shareholders; preparing for exit; execution and leadership/culture development. More generally, they need help adjusting to the fact that they no longer ‘own’ the company and are still expected to run it. It is a huge adjustment.
What has changed most over the last five-ten years for the CEOs and CFOs you work with?
Private equity investment is like the Olympic playing field for businesses. It was and always will be challenging. Having said that, there have been a series of macroeconomic events over the last five years that have provided a series of shocks to the UK’s economic stability and its ability to grow. Starting with Brexit, then Covid, inflation, the rising cost of debt, the consumer spending crunch. And then, in early 2025, US tariffs and a heavy tax environment. All have meant a vast amount of change for the environment in which our members operate. More recently, AI has of course started to have a real impact on teams looking for or working with private equity investors. AI will bring disruption to every single industry. As a result, today management teams are asked to demonstrate that their businesses can tolerate AI introductions while delivering value through using the technology themselves? This is a big shift in focus for most businesses and increasingly, is one we are helping them to address.
What is your best advice for someone preparing for an exit?
Number one: get your data into shape in preparation for the due diligence process. Investors really want to know that your business can do what you say it can do. Prove it. Two, define your ten-year future growth story so that it makes sense and will stand up to scrutiny. Three, understand your buyer pool. The days of taking an investment memorandum and selling your business out in the in the market without really understanding your buyer pool are gone. Successful transactions and exits happen because the shareholders, the current investors and the management team are very specific about who the potential buyers are. Finally, it is important to have a plan in place for what you're going to do with the wealth when it arrives. That way, you don’t have to worry about it and it doesn’t distract you from your day job. Getting the right advisers on board early means they can think about structures that work for you and your family. That way, when it comes to the end of your journey in this business, you will be well positioned to think about the next stage of your life.
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