Read 2026-10-28
Acquisition criteria template
A buy box names the sector, the area, the size of business and how much you will put in. The UK investors we read that publish a number state tickets from £1 million to £20 million; most publish none. Tell us your own buy box and Joseph Ellul will reply himself.
Source: UK Acquirer Criteria Board: every row, with its source
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UK Acquirer Criteria Board
3 published prices from 2 providers' own pages, £1,000,000 to £20,000,000.
Initial1 price
- nvm.co.uk £1,000,000
£1 million – £5 million
Follow on1 price
- nvm.co.uk £5,000,000
£5 million – £15 million
Maximum1 price
- mavencp.com £20,000,000
£20m
Send us your buy box
Three steps
- Tell us the sector, the area, the price range and whether you would buy the shares or the assets. Two minutes, no account.
- Joseph Ellul reads the brief himself. Nothing is passed to a broker, a panel or a marketing list.
- You get a reply about what a search for that brief involves. Ask questions, carry on, or do nothing.
This is a free information site run by Joseph Ellul. When you send a brief, he reads it and replies to you himself; it is not passed to any broker or firm, and you pay nothing to ask. The site carries no advertising, no sponsored placement and no affiliate links, and no firm in a table has paid to be there. Every figure is read from the named firm's or authority's own public page on the date shown. Nothing here is tax, legal, regulated or investment advice; check the source before you rely on a row.
UK Acquirer Criteria Board
Last updated
Every provider below was read on its own page through our fetch box, and the row says what that page published on the day we read it. 2 of 23 publish a figure; the rest are listed too, because how many will not quote a number is the most useful thing about this market. Nothing here is a quote for your purchase: it is what other people advertise.
Every row is a verbatim sentence read from the named source's own page through our fetch service on the date shown, hash-pinned to the stored read (the sha of the page's visible text; the raw page is mirrored to R2). 2 of the 23 named sources that could be read published a usable figure; 21 published none and are recorded as not published, never filled in; 2 could not be read (blocked, dead or unreachable) and count nowhere. The headline figures (median, minimum, maximum, quartiles) are over ONE figure per source for each breakdown it prices, in GBP (a source's median where its page yielded several accepted sentences for one breakdown), so a page that gives figures for several breakdowns gives one for each and N counts 3 figures, never sentences; 7 candidate sentence(s) were refused by a reviewer with the reason recorded. The fuller derivation this dataset is chartered to grow into (not yet what the figures above are; they are each source's own published figure as read): per acquirer the criteria it publishes, normalised into the buy-box fields (sector, region, revenue band, EBITDA band, EV band, ticket, majority or minority, share or asset); across acquirers the median and range of each band by buyer type, and the share that publish a numeric band at all
- The median published figure is £5,000,000 across 3 readings, with the middle half between £1,000,000 and £20,000,000. (UK Acquirer Criteria Board: every row, with its source)
- 2 of 23 providers read publish a price at all; 21 publish none. (UK Acquirer Criteria Board: every row, with its source)
- The cheapest published figure is £1,000,000, by NVM Private Equity. (NVM Private Equity (its own page, listed on this site's dataset page))
- The dearest published figure is £20,000,000, by Maven Capital Partners. (Maven Capital Partners (its own page, listed on this site's dataset page))
Cite this page
“UK Acquirer Criteria Board”, Acquisition Criteria, https://acquisitioncriteria.co.uk/ (updated 2026-10-28). Every row is a verbatim sentence read from the named source's own page through our fetch service on the date shown, hash-pinned to the stored read (the sha of the page's visible text; the raw page is mirrored to R2). 2 of the 23 named sources that could be read published a usable figure; 21 published none and are recorded as not published, never filled in; 2 could not be read (blocked, dead or unreachable) and count nowhere. The headline figures (median, minimum, maximum, quartiles) are over ONE figure per source for each breakdown it prices, in GBP (a source's median where its page yielded several accepted sentences for one breakdown), so a page that gives figures for several breakdowns gives one for each and N counts 3 figures, never sentences; 7 candidate sentence(s) were refused by a reviewer with the reason recorded. The fuller derivation this dataset is chartered to grow into (not yet what the figures above are; they are each source's own published figure as read): per acquirer the criteria it publishes, normalised into the buy-box fields (sector, region, revenue band, EBITDA band, EV band, ticket, majority or minority, share or asset); across acquirers the median and range of each band by buyer type, and the share that publish a numeric band at all
Common questions
What do established UK acquirers say they buy: sector, size (revenue, EBITDA, enterprise value), geography, deal type and ticket?
The median published figure is £5,000,000. The middle half of the readings sit between £1,000,000 and £20,000,000 and the whole spread runs £1,000,000 to £20,000,000, over 3 figures read on 2026-10-28. A spread that wide is the honest answer: what you pay depends on the scope, so the table below shows every reading and who published it. (UK Acquirer Criteria Board: every row, with its source)
How many providers publish a price at all?
2 of the 23 read, out of 25 named. The others answer with a quote form. They are listed in the table as publishing no price rather than dropped, because the share of a market that will not put a number on its own page is itself a finding. (UK Acquirer Criteria Board: every row, with its source)
Where do these figures come from, and when were they read?
Each one is a sentence on the provider's own page, read on 2026-10-28 through our own fetch box and stored with the hash of the page's text, so the row can be checked against what was there that day. The row links to the page it came from. (UK Acquirer Criteria Board: every row, with its source)
Is this what my purchase will cost?
No. Every figure here is what a provider advertises on its own page for its own packages, not a quote for your purchase, and the spread from £1,000,000 to £20,000,000 is exactly why. Scope is what moves it. This page is so you know what you are hearing when an adviser quotes. (UK Acquirer Criteria Board: every row, with its source)
Who answers an enquiry from this page?
Joseph Ellul, who runs this site, reads every brief himself and replies directly. It is not passed to any broker or firm, and your details are not sold or shared with anyone.
Sources
This site's own datasets, every figure quoted from its source and dated:
- The UK Acquirer Criteria Board carries 3 published figures read from 2 sources' own pages, from 1,000,000 to 20,000,000 GBP, read 28 October 2026.
- The UK Acquisition Rules carries 2 published figures read from 1 source's own page, from 100,000,000 to 350,000,000 GBP, read 28 October 2026.
- Lonsdale Capital Partners (its own page, listed on this site's dataset page)
- YFM Equity Partners (its own page, listed on this site's dataset page)
- NVM Private Equity (its own page, listed on this site's dataset page)
- Maven Capital Partners (its own page, listed on this site's dataset page)
- LDC (its own page, listed on this site's dataset page)
- Palatine Private Equity (its own page, listed on this site's dataset page)
- Mobeus (its own page, listed on this site's dataset page)
- Livingbridge (its own page, listed on this site's dataset page)