Frequently
asked questions

We are Kerim Baccari and Francesca Colantuoni, a husband-and-wife team based in London. We both spent years in private equity and consulting, buying and improving companies for big institutions, before we left to build our own group. We have completed two acquisitions and own them today.

Yes. We are private investors, not a fund. We started small, funding our first acquisition with our own savings. We grew that business, acquired a second, and today the group makes around £5m in annual profit. We fund each acquisition with a combination of moderate debt, raised responsibly, and equity. The equity is overwhelmingly our own cash, alongside a small group of high-net-worth individuals who co-invested in our earlier acquisitions and have committed to invest alongside us again. They are passive co-investors who back us on the same terms we invest ourselves. As the group grows, we also reinvest the cash flow of the businesses we already own. And because it is our own cash at stake, we have real skin in the game: we care about these businesses in a way a buyer spending other people's money might not.

Not quite, and honestly we are wary of labels. We are simply business owners who buy companies with our own money and set out to grow them. If a label helps, the closest is a family-owned holding company: a group that owns several businesses and intends to keep them for good.

Backer Capital Limited (incorporated 2022) and Backer Group Limited (incorporated 2024) are our holding companies. The companies you see on Companies House are simply the vehicles we use to acquire and hold our businesses, which is how acquisitions are normally structured. Holding companies carry light balance sheets by design: we do not leave surplus cash sitting in them. We hold it either in the trading businesses (UK Farmcare Limited and Readypay Limited) or in our own personal accounts, ready to invest directly into the next acquisition. So what really matters, the capital behind each deal and our track record of completing, is not something you can read from an incorporation date or a publicly filed balance sheet. We have funded and closed two acquisitions this way, and it is how financial buyers typically structure their holdings.

No. We are professional investors. We learned how to buy and own businesses at some of the best private equity firms in the world, not from an online course. And we put a meaningful amount of our own cash into every single deal, so there is real money, and real conviction, behind every offer we make.

We have completed two acquisitions, and those were the only two opportunities we have ever taken into formal due diligence. We have never pulled out of a deal once we were in diligence. We only take a process forward when we genuinely believe we can finish it, and because it is just the two of us making the decisions, there is no investment committee or board that can change its mind at the last minute. We give a clear view early, and once we are committed we typically complete within around three months of agreeing heads of terms. And once a deal is done, we stand behind it: we have made every deferred payment to our sellers in full and on time.

They stay. We keep your employees, your brand and your management in place, and we run the business standalone rather than absorbing it into a wider group. We do not fix what is not broken. We have never let anyone go in a business we have bought. If anything, we have invested to grow the team. The clearest sign we have done our job well is when your people and your customers barely notice that ownership has changed.

No. We are owners, not operators. The day-to-day stays with the management team, and where an owner is leaving we make sure there is a capable successor, with your endorsement, before any handover. Our role is ownership: we carry the ultimate responsibility and steer the big decisions, while the people who know the business best keep running it.

You keep the autonomy, and our trust, to run the business as you have been. We are not looking to take the wheel. Where we differ from a typical private equity buyer is that we do not treat you as a monthly reporting line, chasing you for numbers and answers. We see it as a partnership: our job is to help you deliver your growth plan, so you are backed rather than left to it on your own. That means capital when the business needs it, a fresh perspective from owning businesses across different sectors, and our own time and hands on the bigger decisions whenever that is genuinely useful. Supported, never micromanaged.

We would not, and we would not try to. We are not from your industry, and that is deliberate, because we are building a group that is diversified across industries. We will never know your business as well as you do, and we do not pretend to. Unlike some private equity buyers, we do not arrive convinced we know better. We let your team keep doing what they do well, which is run the business, and we focus on what we do well, which is own it: the strategic calls, the investment decisions and the ultimate financial responsibility, rather than the day-to-day.

Quite a lot.

1. We are willing to invest in growth, and to take risks that many owners no longer want to. By the time a business comfortably funds your lifestyle, it is natural to stop wanting to put what you have built at risk just to grow it further. We think differently. We are hungry to grow the businesses we own, and we will put real money and real effort behind that growth.
2. We back each business with real capital, so it can make growth investments and bolt-on acquisitions that are hard to justify when it is all your own money on the line. And through our network, we can open up new opportunities to scale, from partnerships to acquisitions, that a business might not reach on its own.
3. We tend to secure better financing terms than a standalone business of your size, and we can access additional growth capital that founder-owned businesses usually cannot reach on their own.
4. We take off your plate, and your management's, the parts of ownership most people dislike: the financial side, the reporting and the admin. That frees the team to focus on running the business, which tends to lift both performance and morale.
5. We bring a fresh perspective from owning and advising companies across different industries, and we carry those lessons into each business we buy.
6. We can draw on a network of expert advisers across functions such as finance, sales, HR, operations and financial due diligence when a business needs them.

Most private equity buys a business to sell it again within a few years, which forces a short-term, disruptive approach. We buy to hold for the long term, so we do not need to do any of that. A trade buyer, on the other hand, is usually buying for synergies: combining your premises, your support functions and sometimes your team into theirs. Our model is the opposite. We keep your business as it is rather than absorbing it, which is central to how we operate. And unlike private equity, we do not run a business as numbers on a spreadsheet. To us it is real people and real customers, and a reputation you have built over many years, not just pounds and a return. Nor do we sit at a distance watching the monthly numbers and pushing the management team to hit them. We do not run the day-to-day, but we are not absentee either: we get into the detail and support your management wherever we are genuinely useful.

We are long-term investors. Rather than aiming for a single profitable sale, we own great businesses that generate healthy cash flow year after year. We reinvest much of that cash flow to keep growing each business, and over time the group pays us an ongoing annual dividend. That is how the model works for us, and the patience is the whole point: it lets us reinvest properly and avoid the short-term pressure that makes other buyers disruptive.

No. We can pay as much as a private equity buyer. The only real difference is how we earn our return: we make it back through dividends over many years rather than a single sale. That does not change how we value your business.

We pay sensible, market-value multiples, and we are not in the business of lowballing. We are honest that we cannot always match the highest possible headline number, because we are not making the cost savings a trade buyer makes by consolidating premises, support functions and people into their own. A trade buyer also absorbs your brand into theirs. What we offer is a proper price for your business, from a buyer who will keep it whole, keep its name, and keep your people in their jobs.

We keep it simple. We pay the majority of the price upfront, on completion, with the balance deferred over the following couple of years. Where a seller wants to stay invested, we are glad for them to roll part of their proceeds into shares so they benefit from the future growth. And because we are not bound by a fund's rules or an investment committee, we can be more creative than most buyers in finding a structure that works for you. We shape it around what matters most to you.

That depends partly on you and partly on the business. Some owners want a clean exit, some want to stay on for a period in a reduced role, and some want to step back from the day-to-day while keeping a hand in (as an adviser, for example). It also depends on how involved you are today: if the business already runs without you, you can step away quickly; if it still leans on you, a longer handover usually makes sense. What matters most to us is that the transition is smooth, and we will build it around that.

It usually starts with an introductory conversation, where we try to establish early whether there is a fit and whether we are aligned on price. If there is, we sign a confidentiality agreement, review your key financials and put forward an indicative offer. If we are aligned, we formalise it into heads of terms, and from there we typically complete within around three months. We use experienced external advisers for the financial and legal due diligence. We are not in the business of wasting anyone's time, and we stay upfront and transparent throughout.

Yes. We are very happy to put you in touch with sellers we have worked with, once a deal is agreed in principle.