Exit Options Review

⚠️ **Finance warning / Avertissement finance** : informational only, not investment advice. Comparing exit routes clarifies a decision, it does not guarantee proceeds: markets close, buyers walk, there is a real risk of loss and of a lower realisation than any route indicates, and no comparison here is a promise of return. Curated by Skill Harbor: the exit options review skill of the private equity pack in andreworia/claude-finance-skills. Use it when the fund is deciding how to exit, not whether, usually twelve to twenty-four months before the intended realisation, and again whenever something moves the decision (a debt market reopening or shutting, an unsolicited approach, a fund life running down, LPs pressing for DPI); run it before a bank is mandated, because once an advisor is appointed the process design is largely fixed. The method fixes the hold case first as the reference case, not a residual: two more years of ownership on the current trajectory, debt paid down, the exit multiple then assumed, and the resulting equity value discounted back at the fund cost of equity, because without that number no route can be judged against doing nothing. Every route (trade sale, sponsor-to-sponsor, IPO, continuation vehicle, continued hold) is then scored on the same four axes even where one looks obviously wrong: value as proceeds net to the fund at its ownership percentage after debt and transaction costs, never headline EV, certainty of completion at the indicated price, timing as months to cash in the fund hands, not to signing, and readiness cost, the work and spend required before the route is credible. Route-specific risks are worked explicitly: a trade sale usually carries the highest price and the lowest certainty (antitrust review, buyer board processes, handing information to a competitor), sponsor-to-sponsor is faster and more predictable but caps at what an LBO model supports and needs runway left for the next owner, an IPO is a financing event rather than an exit (lock-up, free-float minimums, listing discount, cost of being public, most value still held at market risk), and a continuation vehicle must be priced by third-party capital with LPAC consent and usually a fairness opinion, with the GP on both sides of the price. Fund-level constraints are tested as facts (fund life and extension rights, current DPI and the next fundraise, concentration, follow-on capacity, conflicts to disclose), and the review ends with one primary route, one fallback, and the specific switch conditions between them, with any dual-track priced for its real cost in money and management time. The worked example in the file, Halden Instruments, is fictional and illustrative. From the andreworia/claude-finance-skills repository (MIT). Honest caveats: current EBITDA, net debt, ownership, comparables, precedents and the fund position are yours to supply and to verify; indicated values are estimates under assumptions, not bids. Skill Harbor never reviews the code, review it yourself before use.