How UK Accountancy Practices Are Valued: GRF Multiples Explained
What a GRF multiple actually is, why UK accountancy practices typically sell for 0.8–1.6x gross recurring fees, and what moves your firm up or down the range.
We back UK businesses two ways: buying professional services firms through Practice Group, and lending secured to growing SMEs through Found Credit.
We publish the multiple we pay and the rates we lend at. Both are on this site, before you speak to anyone. You should know where you stand before the first call, not four months into a process.
We buy UK accountancy, legal and IFA firms — usually from founders thinking about retirement, succession, or simply stepping back a bit. Practice Group is the delivery partner and the buyer you actually meet. No broker, no auction, no listing your practice around the market.
We pay 1.3–1.6x gross recurring fees, and we publish it because the founders we want to work with value straight talk over negotiation theatre. What we are not doing is squeezing a practice dry and moving on. Your name, your people and your clients come through the deal intact, or there was no point doing it.
Explore the Practice Group FundSometimes a business needs money, not a new shareholder. Found Credit lends £100k to £2m, secured, at 6–10% fixed over two to five years — and you keep every share you own.
The high street left this end of the market years ago. We didn’t. Decisions inside ten days, terms you can read in one sitting, and no covenant you only find out about in year three.
Explore Found CreditNobody wakes up wanting a private markets investment firm. They wake up with something specific on their mind. Find yours below — and if none of them is you, we are probably the wrong door, which is worth knowing now rather than in six weeks.
You have built a firm over twenty or thirty years and you are thinking about retirement, or a partner is. What you do not want is your practice listed around the market while your team hears about it from a client. We buy direct at 1.3–1.6x recurring fees, Practice Group runs it afterwards, and you leave cleanly or step down over a couple of years.
What moves the multipleThe business is profitable or growing, there is a defined job for the cash, and handing over a permanent slice of equity to fund a temporary need makes no sense. £100k to £2m, secured, 6–10% fixed, two to five years, and you keep every share.
How Found Credit worksNot a blind pool and not a fund of funds — a strategy in businesses you could go and visit, with quarterly reporting and an entry multiple that is published rather than negotiated. Available to professional, high-net-worth and self-certified sophisticated investors only.
The Practice Group FundThen we are not for you, and we will say so on the first call. Startups looking for growth equity, businesses that need capital and nothing else, firms where the plan is to cut hard and move on — all real things, none of them us. We will point you somewhere better rather than take a meeting to be polite.
Most capital in this market is priced by people who have never had to make a payroll run. We have. It changes what you look at, and it changes what you are willing to pay for.
I have founded and backed four companies across finance, law, technology and investment, and I still run several of them. So when we look at a firm, we are not reading a model — we are recognising a situation we have been in ourselves, usually more than once.
Money on its own has never fixed a business. What actually moves the needle is unglamorous: better systems, a leadership team that isn’t one person, and someone honest enough to tell you which of your problems is the real one. We bring the capital and that, or we don’t bring the capital.
What a GRF multiple actually is, why UK accountancy practices typically sell for 0.8–1.6x gross recurring fees, and what moves your firm up or down the range.
Thousands of UK professional services founders are approaching retirement without a succession plan. The demographic maths behind the decade's quietest investment story.
Private equity has arrived in UK accountancy at scale — Grant Thornton, Evelyn Partners, Azets, Xeinadin. A map of the consolidation wave and what it means for independent firms.
A short, occasional email on the UK private equity and private credit market — professional services consolidation, succession trends, and what we're seeing on the ground. Commentary and information only; never a promotion. Unsubscribe any time.
If you are building a business, exploring funding options, or interested in learning more about our investment strategies, we welcome the opportunity to start a conversation.