Viking Mergers & Acquisitions
At a Glance
The Southeast bench, and the clearest published account anywhere of what a broker does not charge.
- Pricing
- Success Fee, Four negatives and one positive, in its own words: it 'does NOT charge retainer fees', 'does NOT charge hourly or project-based fees', 'does NOT charge out-of-pocket expenses', and of the success fee, 'This is the only fee Viking M&A charges. You do not pay anything if your business does not sell.' No percentage is published, and the statements sit in a blog post rather than on a pricing page.
- Best For
- Buyers working the Southeast, Mid-Atlantic or Texas who want a firm that spells out its charges line by line
- Kind
- One firm, one bench of brokers, one process.
- Footprint
- Names Florida, Georgia, Maryland, Missouri, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and Washington, D.C.. It names those states and works others too, so a state it does not name is worth asking about rather than ruling out.
- Seller Fee
- Publishes the structure. It says when a fee is owed and on what basis, but names no number, so the amount takes a call.
- Roadmap Stages
- 2. Define & Test Your Thesis4. Source & Screen Deals
Pros and Cons
Pros
- The most itemized fee statement on this shelf, naming four separate charges it does not make
- Names its offices state by state, and splits its work into a brokerage tier and an M&A tier at $10M
- More than 950 closed transactions since 1996 by its own count
Cons
- The fee detail lives in a blog post rather than on a pricing page, so re-read it before relying on it
- No percentage of any kind: the structure is stated and the number is not
- Publishes nothing for buyers, with no registration and no statement of who pays the broker
What Searchers Say
Office states, tier split, fee statements and transaction count read from Viking's own pages. Its locations page enumerates offices rather than a service area, and a separate sentence describes growth 'into a multi-region M&A firm', so the state list is a floor rather than a boundary.
How to Approach
Viking Mergers & Acquisitions is a brokerage, and it works for the seller rather than for you, so this is how that side of the table comes in and what it is deciding about you.
The Typical Arc
- A teaser and an NDA, before you see the name of the business.
- A call with the listing broker, who is screening you as much as answering you.
- The CIM, then a seller meeting the broker schedules and usually sits in on.
- Your offer, carried by the broker to the seller they represent.
What It Weighs
- Whether your money is real: how much is cash, and where the rest is coming from.
- Whether your criteria are specific enough to match against a listing.
- How fast you move, because the fee arrives on a close rather than on a conversation.
How to Prepare
- Write the one page a broker asks for before you inquire. Buyer Profile Builder
- Set criteria specific enough for a listing to match. Buy Box Builder
- Know what you can pay before the CIM lands. Business Valuation Calculator