Running the sale
Sell-Side Process
You are running a live sale — as the advisor, or as the owner sitting on the other side of the advisor — and you need to know what the next document buys you and what it costs.
Bankers, corp dev, and credit teams executing a transaction
The deal, stage by stage.
BankingBeast is a reference for people running a live transaction: what the next document buys, what the next stage costs, and which clause a diligence finding becomes. Organized on the deal itself — not on a course catalog, a recruiting funnel, or a data-room folder tree.
Not written for someone preparing for an interview, and not written for someone raising a fund. If you are running a vehicle and reporting to LPs, or modelling carry, or raising venture capital, a sibling property owns that seat.
The spine
Two lifecycles, and they are not mirror images. The sell-side chain runs 11 stages from preparation to post-closing true-up. The buy-side chain runs 9, and it diverges structurally rather than by perspective: origination is a permanent function, the investment-committee gate has no sell-side analogue at all, and integration planning starts before signing.
Selling a company
- 1Stage 1 — Preparation
- 2Stage 2 — Buyer list and outreach
- 3Stage 3 — Teaser
- 4Stage 4 — NDA / confidentiality
- 5Stage 5 — CIM / information memorandum
- 6Stage 6 — IOI / first round
- 7Stage 7 — Management presentations and second round
- 8Stage 8 — LOI, term sheet and exclusivity
- 9Stage 9 — Confirmatory diligence
- 10Stage 10 — Definitive agreement and signing
- 11Stage 11 — Closing and post-closing
Buying one
- 1Buy-side 1 — Investment thesis
- 2Buy-side 2 — Origination / sourcing
- 3Buy-side 3 — Screening
- 4Buy-side 4 — IOI / indication
- 5Buy-side 5 — LOI and exclusivity
- 6Buy-side 6 — Diligence workstream launch
- 7Buy-side 7 — IC / board approval
- 8Buy-side 8 — Financing arrangement
- 9Buy-side 9 — Integration planning to PMI
Where to start
Originate, screen, approve, fund
Buy-Side and Corporate Development
You are the buyer — a corp-dev lead, a holdco or search principal, a deal team — running a funnel of targets toward one signature, and most of your cost is the deals you correctly decline.
Funding the purchase price
Debt and Credit Markets
You are assembling or underwriting the debt behind an acquisition, and the number you commit to has to survive a credit committee and a downside case.
Defending the number
Valuation Methods
You have to defend a number to a counterparty, a credit committee, or a neutral — not produce a range for a pitch.
From collected to priced
Diligence Workstreams
You are running or answering diligence on a live deal, and every finding either changes the price, becomes a clause, or gets waived on purpose.
Current, and dated
Four positions that moved recently and are still taught the old way across the education corpus. Each one is dated and sourced to the primary document.
The 6x leveraged-lending guidance was rescinded on 5 December 2025.
The OCC and the FDIC withdrew from the 2013 Interagency Guidance on Leveraged Lending. The Federal Reserve did not join the withdrawal, and a lender's own credit policy is what binds a given deal either way.
As of 2026-07-30 · Sources: T1-04 · T1-05 · T3-09 · interagency leveraged lending rescission
SOP 50 10 8 reinstated a 10% equity injection on a change of ownership, effective 1 June 2025.
A seller note counts toward the injection only on full standby and only up to half of the requirement, which is what closed the zero-down SBA acquisition window.
As of 2026-07-30 · Sources: T1-13 · T3-11 · T3-12 · sop 50 10 8
The FTC non-compete rule was removed from the CFR on 12 February 2026.
The rule was set aside in Ryan LLC v. FTC, the Commission acceded to vacatur in September 2025, and enforceability is back to state law with the FTC taking a case-by-case posture.
As of 2026-07-30 · Sources: T1-16 · T1-17 · T1-18 · non compete vacatur
2026 HSR thresholds took effect for transactions closing on or after 17 February.
The size-of-transaction threshold moved to $133.9 million, with filing fees running from $35,000 to $2.46 million. Note the sourcing: the FTC release returns 403 to automated fetch, so these figures come from named law-firm restatements rather than from the release itself.
As of 2026-07-30 · Sources: T3-15 · T3-16 · T3-33 · hsr thresholds 2026