Buy a Business in Europe
Europe's lower-middle market holds thousands of profitable, owner-run companies that most US buyers never see from across the Atlantic. FISART is the cross-border bridge. We run a dedicated European acquisition search on your behalf, source off-market targets, pre-value them, and put a team on the ground where you have none.
Key takeaways
- FISART is a cross-border buy-side advisor. We source off-market European acquisition targets for US and international buyers and run the search end to end, on a retainer-plus-success model.
- Europe’s lower-middle market prices below the US. In 2025, US private-equity buyouts cleared a median of 12.8x EV/EBITDA against 11.2x in Europe, and small lower-mid deals price well below both, often in the 4x to 8x range.
- A multi-year ownership-transfer wave is underway. Roughly 450,000 European businesses change hands each year, and about 150,000 a year are at risk of finding no successor at all.
- We serve PE (platform and add-on), search funds, SaaS and software aggregators, holdcos, family offices, and corporate strategics expanding into Europe.
- Engagements pair a monthly retainer, credited against the success fee, with a success fee on completion. Mandates are scoped to a sector or geography and run inside a defined buy-box.
Last updated: July 2026 · Reviewed by the FISART senior team
Focus
Micro to lower-middle-market
Coverage
United States and Europe
Deal types
Share, asset, carve-out, IP
Model
Retainer plus success fee
Why acquire in Europe now
Europe's lower-middle market is cheaper to enter than the US and is moving into a multi-year wave of owner-driven sales. Those two facts, at the same time, are what make the current window unusual.
Start with price. In 2025, US private-equity buyouts cleared a median of 12.8x EV/EBITDA, while European buyouts cleared 11.2x, a full 1.6x gap in favor of the buyer in Europe. The gap widens as you go down in size. Small and lower-mid deals routinely price in the 4x to 8x EBITDA range, and GF Data recorded businesses with 10 to 25 million USD in enterprise value averaging 5.9x through Q3 2025. For a buyer who can operate a smaller company, Europe offers more asset for the dollar than a comparable target at home.
Then add supply. Roughly 450,000 European businesses are transferred every year, and about 150,000 a year are at risk of finding no successor. Germany alone is projected to see around 545,000 Mittelstand ownership transfers by the end of 2029, and for the first time in KfW's monitoring history, the number of German owners planning to close on retirement now exceeds the number planning a handover. France has close to 370,000 companies in scope for transfer by 2030. Switzerland has an estimated 168,000. These are healthy, cash-generating companies whose owners are aging out, and many of them have no obvious buyer.
The last piece is structure. Europe is fragmented. Ownership is largely private, family-held, and spread across dozens of national markets, each with its own language, tax code, and deal conventions. That fragmentation is exactly why the pricing gap exists. It also means most of these companies never reach a US buyer's desk. They are sold quietly, through local networks, in local languages, often without a formal process. For an American acquirer, the real constraint is access rather than capital.
Cross-border interest reflects this. US-investor participation in European deals kept climbing into 2026, with deal count and value both up on the prior year, as allocators reframed Europe as a priority region on the strength of lower entry multiples and less competition. The opportunity is real. The question for any US buyer is how to reach it.
What FISART does for buyers
FISART builds and runs a European acquisition search on your behalf. You give us a buy-box. We do the sourcing, screening, valuation, and cross-border coordination that turns a thesis into a pipeline of real, reachable targets.
In practice that means four things. We originate against your thesis, running targeted outreach to European owners who fit your criteria, most of whom are not on any market. We screen and pre-value each target using FISART's valuation engine, so what reaches you is qualified and already benchmarked, not a raw lead. We coordinate across the border, handling language, local relationships, and first conversations in-market. And we stay with the process through introductions and into the deal.
Technology is part of how we source. It is not our pitch. AI-assisted target discovery lets us widen the pool well beyond a traditional advisor's rolodex, screening thousands of European companies against your buy-box and surfacing the ones worth a human conversation. The judgment, the relationships, and the negotiation stay with senior advisors. AI expands the search. It does not replace the advisor who runs it.
The result is a search that behaves like an in-house corporate-development function in Europe, without you hiring, opening an office, or spending two years building a local network from scratch.
Ready to search?
Tell us what you are looking for
Submit your acquisition criteria and we will come back with how we would run the search.
Buyer types we serve
We work with buyers who have a clear mandate to deploy capital into Europe and who lack the local sourcing to do it efficiently. That covers a range of profiles, and the reason they engage us differs by type.
| Buyer type | What they acquire | Typical focus | How FISART helps |
|---|---|---|---|
| PE, platform | New platform companies | Lower-mid and up | Proprietary, off-market European platforms |
| PE, add-on | Bolt-ons for portfolio companies | Micro to lower-mid | A thesis-matched add-on pipeline in-market |
| Search fund | A single company to own and operate | Lower-mid | Cross-border search where the local network is thin |
| SaaS or tool aggregator | Multiple software assets | Micro | Pre-valued European SaaS and tool flow |
| Holdco | Durable cash-flow businesses | Micro to lower-mid | Curated, vetted targets that fit a long hold |
| Family office | Direct bolt-ons and holds | Lower-mid | Discreet, off-market origination |
| Corporate strategic | Market entry or capability | Varies | Local access, first meetings, and diligence support |
Search funds
Search funds are a distinct group, and Europe is one of the hardest places for them to source alone. A searcher raising or deploying capital typically has a strong operating profile and a thin acquisition network, and that network gets thinner the moment the search crosses a border. FISART gives a searcher a European sourcing engine from day one: targets that match the search thesis, pre-vetted and pre-valued, with in-market introductions handled for you. As cross-border search-fund activity grows in Europe, the searchers who move first into under-covered markets have the pricing advantage. We help you get there before the market does.
How it works: the mandate model
A FISART buy-side engagement pairs a monthly retainer, credited against the success fee, with a success fee paid on completion. The retainer funds an active, dedicated search. The credit means both sides have real skin in the game from day one, and the retainer is an advance against the final fee rather than an additional cost.
Mandates are scoped. Rather than an open-ended "find us anything," we agree a buy-box up front: sector, size, deal type, geography, and timeline. Within that scope we run a focused search, which is what makes proprietary, off-market access possible. Buy-side mandates in the market are usually non-exclusive, and ours are typically scoped by sector or geography, so you can run us alongside your other channels while we own a defined lane.
The process runs in five steps:
Buy-box
We define your acquisition criteria together and agree the mandate scope.
Search
We originate against the thesis, reaching European owners directly, most of them off-market.
Curated targets
You receive qualified, pre-valued targets, not raw leads, on a regular cadence.
Introductions
We handle first conversations in-market and warm the relationship before you engage.
Toward close
We support diligence coordination and cross-border deal mechanics through to completion.
Deal types we support
We support the full range of transaction structures a lower-middle-market buyer uses in Europe, and the right structure depends on your risk appetite and what you are actually buying.
| Deal type | What it means | When buyers use it |
|---|---|---|
| Share deal | You buy the company or entity outright | Standard full acquisition |
| Asset deal | You buy the assets, not the legal entity | Risk isolation and carve-outs |
| Carve-out or partial | You buy a division or take a stake | Non-core units, minority-to-control paths |
| IP-only | You acquire the technology or IP | Tuck-ins and acqui-hire style deals |
A US aggregator buying a small European software product may want an asset or IP-only structure that isolates the technology. A search fund taking over a going concern wants a clean share deal. A strategic entering a new market may start with a minority stake and a path to control. We shape the search and the approach around the structure that fits your mandate, and we flag the cross-border tax and legal questions each structure raises so you can bring the right local counsel in early.
The cross-border bridge
FISART is built for exactly this direction of travel. We are headquartered in Fort Lauderdale with European roots and an on-the-ground presence in the markets where the targets are. That dual anchor is the point. It lets us speak to a US buyer in US terms and to a German or French owner in theirs.
Reaching a European lower-mid target takes more than a database. It takes language, local credibility, and someone who can sit across the table from an owner who has spent 30 years building the company and wants to know who is on the other side. It takes an understanding that European deal processes, disclosure norms, and timelines differ from the US, and that a founder-owner in the Mittelstand responds to a different approach than a US corporate seller. That is the work we do between your thesis and a signed deal, and it is the reason a search that would take you two years to build locally can run now.
Sectors
We run searches across the sectors where lower-middle-market cross-border activity is strongest, with a focus on the German-speaking DACH region and broader Europe. That includes software and SaaS, digital agencies, ecommerce and DTC brands, and a range of business and specialty services. Sector-specific buyer hubs are rolling out, so if you are acquiring in a particular vertical, tell us in your buy-box and we will scope the search to it.
Submit your acquisition criteria
Tell us what you are looking for and we will come back with how we would run the search. The more specific your buy-box, the faster we can surface real targets.
Frequently asked questions
Direct answers on cross-border acquisitions, buy-side advisory, fees, and coverage.
Sources
- 1.US 12.8x vs Europe 11.2x median PE EV/EBITDA (2025). Lower-mid 4x to 8x. GF Data 10 to 25M USD TEV avg 5.9x through Q3 2025. Sources: CLFI, GF Data, MNA Community, 2025.
- 2.~450,000 European business transfers/year, ~150,000/year at risk of no successor. Sources: European Commission, All Interests Aligned, EILLA data compilation.
- 3.Germany ~545,000 Mittelstand transfers by end 2029, planned closures now exceed transfers. Source: KfW succession status report.
- 4.France ~370,000 in scope by 2030. Switzerland ~168,000 (UBS, University of St. Gallen).
- 5.US-into-Europe cross-border deal count and value up into 2026. Source: Ropes & Gray European PE Market Recap, 2026.
Updated: July 2026.
Byline: Ludwig Schroedl.
Ready to source in Europe?
Submit your acquisition criteria or book a call with a senior advisor to discuss how we would run the search on your behalf.