The Sale-Leaseback Solves This Year and Prices the Next Ten
Companies short of capital are selling the property they operate from and leasing it back. The proceeds arrive immediately and the obligation arrives every month for two decades.
Business
Top stories in Business
Companies Are Becoming Their Own Insurers
Mid-sized companies that spent years absorbing premium increases are forming captive insurers to keep the money in-house. It works, until the year it is tested.
The Company Town Comes Back, With Better Intentions
Hospitals, resorts, universities and manufacturers are financing workforce housing because recruitment failed for a reason no signing bonus fixes. The model has a history, and it is not a happy one.
The Company Fleet Goes Electric on a Spreadsheet, Not a Pledge
Corporate fleet electrification stalled while it was a sustainability commitment and started moving when it became a total-cost-of-ownership calculation that fleet managers could defend on their own terms.
Warehouse Automation Reaches the Companies That Could Not Afford It
Robotics in distribution was a capital project only the largest operators could justify. Leasing, smaller machines and software that runs on existing racking have moved it within reach of companies shipping a few thousand orders a day.
The Rollup Comes for the Plumbing Business
Private capital has spent three years buying HVAC, plumbing and electrical contractors at multiples the trades have never seen. The thesis is sound, the integration is harder than the model assumed, and the second wave is arriving at higher prices.
The Equipment Lease Was the Last Easy Credit. It Is Not Any More
Small companies that could not get a bank line could always finance a machine, because the machine secured itself. Lenders are now discovering how thin that collateral is when a sector turns.
The Quiet Boom in Franchise Resales
A generation of franchise owners is heading for the exits, and a new class of buyers, many of them corporate refugees, is lining up to take over proven units.
Industrial Distribution Consolidates While Nobody Watches
The regional suppliers that stock fasteners, bearings and safety equipment are being rolled up at a steady clip. The buyers are acquiring something the catalog does not list.
A Wave of Retiring Owners Is Putting Main Street Up for Sale
Millions of small businesses are owned by people at or past retirement age, and most have no succession plan. The scramble to keep them alive is reshaping local economies.
The Service Contract Becomes the Product
For a widening set of manufacturers, the machine is now the customer acquisition cost and the maintenance agreement is the business. The shift is rewriting how these companies are valued.
Employee Ownership Gets a Second Look, From Sellers
Employee stock ownership plans spent decades as an ideological argument. They are being reconsidered as something plainer: a buyer who is already on site when no other buyer appears.