Antarctica Advisors is a Miami, Florida, U.S.A.-based financial advisory firm focused exclusively on the seafood sector.
Managing Partner Ignacio Kleiman and Partner Birgir Brynjolfsson spoke with SeafoodSource about the state of merger and aquisition (M&A) activity in the seafood industry.
SeafoodSource: What are the unique challenges to advising businesses in the seafood sector on completing mergers and acquisitions?
BRYNJOLFSSON: One of the challenges is that this sector is primarily private, meaning that it’s owned mostly by private individuals and rather than publicly listed companies. For that reason, often you encounter situations where there’s not a lot of publicly available information about how companies are doing in the industry. We have made it our business over the last 15 years is to build relationships with owners, and our business has been growing because we have been very integral with the industry when it comes to knowing who is our there looking for M&A opportunities.
SeafoodSource: Do you have any sort of tips or advice for companies that are looking to begin a relationship with a firm like yours?
Kleiman: I would say, the earlier the better, because obviously as family-owned or privatelyowned companies, sometimes there is some cleanup of the balance sheet or preparation and gathering of information that has to be done so that the company is really ready when we try to take it to market.
Brynjolfsson: It’s also important that business owners think about transacting when things are doing well and when there is upside potential. Some of the worst cases we’ve encountered arewhen you have an unexpected event, family event, like a death or sickness or whatnot, and you have to transact because you need to, not because you want to. When business owners encounter a process on their own terms, that’s usually a successful sale.
Also, when you are a family-founded business that is also involved in management, you often have to take into account that you do have to stay involved for perhaps three to five years. So from the day you have the desire or idea to sell the business, you may not be fully out until three to five years later. Business owners who want to start thinking about retirement need to start thinking about transacting or selling the business a few years before actually retiring.
SeafoodSource: Do you feel like the understanding and the awareness has gotten better in the seafood sector as far as ...
