Tell the truth. You will always be found out

Last week I had an MBI prospect. These can be tricky so I send a brief questionnaire before proceeding. One of the questions is, “why do you want to but this business?”

The answer was “to bolt on too my other businesses. It would be a perfect fit”

The target business is a £5m turnover furniture manufacturer

I had serious doubts about my contact and asked him to tell me about his “other businesses”. He went quiet. I said can you just send me their filed accounts

The answer was something like “there aren’t any, I just have an e-commerce business”

He has an Ebay account. Or at least thats all I can assume it is

Aside from the fact that “bolting on” a large furniture manufacturer to an eBay account isn’t a merger that will trouble the Mergers and Acquisitions Authorities, the whole premise is ridiculous

If he had been honest from the start, then fine. We can work around that (although the deal looks impossible to me) but the lying just simply drains any interest from me. I frankly can’t be bothered with him

Further down the line, he will have to meet lenders. Rightly lenders take the view that its one lie and out

And so do I