The FINANCIAL — RPA Caucasus, the exclusive representative office of the Global Investment Company Oncor International, offers its clients a unique service: worldwide business sale and acquisition possibility. Teona Bagdavadze, Chief Operating Officer of RPA Caucasus answers Levan Lomtadze’s questions on the subject.
RPA Caucasus, the exclusive representative office of the Global Investment Company Oncor International, offers its clients a unique service: worldwide business sale and acquisition possibility.
With the reality of constant globalization, it is becoming more and more important to get involved in international business processes.
Nowadays, when prices of real estate are constantly decreasing, demand is increasing for businesses with already established cash-flows. It is also getting more and more timely to buy a business in a foreign country, in order to get the benefits that some countries have to offer. These are benefits to those who are willing to invest in other regions.
According to our research, in case of investment in the United States of at least USD 250,000, you can get a Territory Investor Visa that allows you and the members of your family to live, work and study without any restrictions.
You can also get similar benefits by investing in countries like Switzerland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Spain and many others.
George Amzashvili, CEO, and Teona Bagdavadze, Chief Operating Officer of RPA Caucasus, explained the investment opportunities that they can provide to their clients to The FINANCIAL.
“Professional business brokers from RPA Caucasus are dedicated to serving clients and customers who desire to sell, acquire or valuate their business. Under the name of the leading Investment Company Oncor International, business brokers from RPA Caucasus act as mediators between the buyers and sellers, estimating the value of a particular business and providing advice to their clients,” states George Amzashvili.
“Business brokers from RPA Caucasus are committed to offering professional services in a knowledgeable, ethical and timely manner. They also provide information and business advice to sellers and buyers maintain communications between the parties and coordinate the negotiations and closing processes to complete desired transactions.”
“As part of a global investment company, we have unlimited access to the huge data-base of business for sale all over the world. We can provide our clients with detailed descriptions of the procedures they need to go through in order to become the owners of an already established business, for example in California, or Toscana, and we will be by their side throughout the transaction.”
“Some of our clients used to think that it was very complicated to become a business owner in a foreign country, and conduct business activities in remote mode, but after becoming our clients they were convinced that it’s much easier and more transparent to buy business abroad with our help than to start the acquisition process by themselves,” continues Amzashvili.
The key to success in the process of attracting an investor is the transparent interchange of clear information.
In times of financial crisis companies execute cost optimization strategies. Industrial zones in Georgia, why not take advantage of the Law of Free Industrial Zones in Georgia?
For foreign investors it means lower operating and labour costs. They just need to know about it.
RPA Caucasus acts as a middleman that sends, receives and adapts this data for different investment cultures,” claims the CEO.
Teona Bagdavadze, Chief Operating Officer of RPA Caucasus answers Levan Lomtadze’s questions on the subject.
Q. What are the average prices of businesses that you offer to your clients?
A. The prices of the businesses on sale depend on a combination of several important factors. These are country, region, business type, real estate ownership type, cash-flow, income and the opportunity to extend your business activities. The range of prices for a business that we can offer to a client can be anywhere from USD 30,000 to several millions.
Some of the business owners even offer financing to business buyers, that means the buyer has to pay only 30% of the cost, the rest will be paid by the business itself.
Q. What are the procedures for business buyers?
A. As we have already mentioned, we take responsibility at any stage of the business acquisition process, even when the transaction is closed we offer several consulting services for the business management process.
Q. As you mentioned previously, you can also work for clients who are trying to find investors to sell their business to completely or for further extension of their activities?
A. As for the process of business selling, I would like to point out that our company has established relationships with more than 1,500 investment funds. We also help our clients who are interested in selling their business find potential investors or get financial support for the further extension of the business.
Q. Business brokerage is an unfamiliar service for Georgian customers. Would you please give a detailed explanation of your services for the benefit of our readers?
A. When it comes to our services, especially to business selling process, we ensure total confidentiality, for the reason that we have established systems in place to protect confidentiality.
A contact person is available to answer any questions about the business and scheduling appointments; buyers are pre-screened so that they are financially qualified to buy the business; the more highly financially qualified the buyer is, the more likely the closing will succeed. Negotiating price on behalf of the sellers is also our prerogative.
The seller’s agent acts as a fiduciary for the seller. By not being emotionally tied to the transaction, business brokers are in a position to more effectively negotiate on a seller’s behalf. This may involve preparing a standard offer to purchase contract by filling in the blanks in the contract form.
In some cases, it’s holding an earnest payment in escrow account from the buyer until the closing. In many countries, the closing is the meeting between the buyer and seller where the business ownership is transferred and the business’s name is conveyed.
Q. What are your core competences in the field of Business Brokerage?
A. When we talk about the core competences, the main criteria of our professional team are the transactions that we have concluded with several international investment funds on behalf of Georgian companies. We have signed a agreement on Non disclosure, that’s why I cannot name the companies to you.
But I would like to underline some capabilities that make our companies services more reliable, constructive and accurate:
Market Knowledge – we know where and how to sell a business. Being a member of an international network, we have the understanding of the global market and of course what a business might be worth.
Business Valuation – which is one of the most vital procedures in the business acquisition process, requires more than merely looking at last year’s financial statement. A valuation requires a thorough analysis of several years of the business operation and an opinion about the future outlook of the industry, the economy and how the subject company will compete. Our professionals offer you the most up-to date and sophisticated techniques of business valuation, which are based on widely spread, globally used and affirmed methods. To ensure the integrity, our valuation professionals use more than one method, computing a weighted average to arrive at their final number.
Q. Considering the financial crisis happening all over the world, is it the right time to start offering a business acquisition service in Georgia?
A. In my opinion, it’s the best time to start investing in businesses abroad. Prices of businesses and real estate are decreasing, but unlike real estate, businesses that are for sale have an already established cash-flow which means you can become a business owner with an already set up income.
Q. Are foreign financers willing to invest in Georgia, especially during a financial crisis?
A. As for entrepreneurs who try to attract investors, I would like to say again that Oncor International has an established list of more than 1,500 investor funds and most of them are interested in investing in different businesses in our region.
Q. Who is your targeted audience, whom do you see as your potential client?
A. I would not like to single out any of our potential clients, but in general our potential client could be people who are interested in diversification of their assets, and especially those who were convinced that real estate was the best possibility to invest. They can go to our website Oncor-rpa.com and find some businesses that are interesting for them to buy or contact us .We will try to find a business that they might be interested in according to several criteria, such as country, business type, price, financing possibility and so on.
As we have all observed, prices on real estate are decreasing. Furthermore I would like to repeat that most of the regions you can invest in give you a lot of preferential duties, and residential possibilities for the investor and their family.
Q. As the exclusive representative office of the premier global brokerage network, what are the other services that RPA Caucasus offers to its clients?
A. In the field of non-residential real estate, core competences of RPA Caucasus include real estate investment consulting and strategic development. We also offer consulting services like asset management, strategic consulting, investment services and valuation consulting.
As for valuation services, we have a partnership agreement with one of the leading global real estate advisors, DTZ, and with their help we have already completed several transactions successfully.
Market research is an essential tool in terms of real estate development, to know about the supply and demand in the field. I think that insufficient market research has also caused some problems in the real estate and construction field in Georgia.
We also provide our clients with sophisticated real estate market research. Today RPA continues leading the industry in providing clients with vital market information.
Oncor International professionals combine unmatched local market knowledge and specialty expertise with detailed analysis, unlocking opportunities that support the business goals of each client and establishing a solid foundation for informed action.
Combined with a forward-looking demographic investment strategy, Oncor International offers intelligent solutions that are based upon more than guesswork.
Q. What might further tendencies in the Georgian real estate market’s development be?
A. The general picture is that demand is falling on new office centres and is increasing on middle-class hotels and warehouses, taking into consideration that the new option of the free industrial zone could be very attractive to investors.
I am far from the idea that one should not start a construction process in Georgia, but I think that without adequate market research and sufficient planning, it’s quite risky.
Professionals from our group who have worked with several global leading investment groups can suggest to you several options for the further development of your activities in real estate.
The clients of Oncor International include ABN AMRO Bank, American Express, AT&T Broadband, British Airways, Coca-Cola, Dresdner Bank, Goldman Sachs & Co., Goodyear Tire & Rubber, Hermes, L’Oreal, Merrill Lynch, Nike, NEC Technologies, Nestle, NOKIA, Phillip Morris, Procter & Gamble, UPS, Wells Fargo Bank, and many other transnational companies.
“I think that so many companies cannot be wrong,” added Teona Bagdavadze, Chief Operating Officer of the company.
Written By Levan Lomtadze
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