Customer

WAD Capital, operator-led private equity platform tackling Europe’s SME succession crisis

Highlights

• 4,000+ customer contracts screened in hours instead of weeks

• Legal issues surfaced while still negotiating price and structure

• Internal “pre-DD” becomes the single source of truth, with law firms doing confirmatory checks

Across Europe, thousands of profitable SMEs are disappearing each year. The reason isn’t poor business performance or lack of demand. It’s succession. Owners retire without a successor, and viable companies simply shut down. Over the next decade, around 7 trillion euros of enterprise value in the 1 to 5 million EBITDA range is at risk of being erased from Europe’s economy.

WAD Capital was created to change that trajectory. The firm institutionalizes the search-fund model in Europe at scale. Instead of buying companies first and finding leadership afterward, WAD Capital recruits CEOs in residence, experienced operators with P&L backgrounds, and empowers them to search, acquire and grow a business as their own.

“If we can capture a billion of equity out of that 7 trillion at risk over the next 10 years, I’ll feel we’ve done our part in protecting Europe’s business sovereignty.”

A deal model that demands early legal clarity

Each CEO in residence receives up to 500,000 euros of search capital and has six weeks to define a market where they have a right to win. Once that thesis is approved, they start sourcing acquisitions using WAD Capital’s own tech stack: a screening engine monitoring 60,000 companies a year and outreach programs designed for discretion.

In this model, deals are self-sourced and often unadvised. The team sees internal balance sheets earlier. Conversations are with the seller-operator, not a broker. It creates a huge amount of opportunity but also a practical challenge: the volume of contracts is high relative to ticket size. And classic due diligence economics do not scale down.

“When you allocate one or two million of equity, it doesn’t make sense to spend 150,000 on due diligence. But that’s how the market still works.”

Before Jurimesh, the team relied on limited internal screening plus lawyers late in the process. At that point, the sunk cost fallacy would often creep in: so much effort already invested that walking away no longer feels like a real option.

“We never want to be in a position where we have to do a deal because of the resources we allocated. We want to be able to walk away earlier, and with confidence.”

The shift: front-loading legal due diligence

WAD Capital redesigned its structure around a two-step model.

First: rigorous internal due diligence, starting the moment the seller sends documents.

Second: confirmatory due diligence from external counsel.

Jurimesh sits at the center of that first step. Sellers receive a clear document request list and upload the documents directly into Jurimesh. The tool screens the incoming documents in real time and flags issues that shape negotiation strategy while it still matters.

“We see the data room fill up as the conversation evolves, and can begin analysis immediately instead of waiting weeks for a law firm package.”

Improvement that compounds with every deal

WAD Capital’s analysts worked with Jurimesh to tailor playbooks to CEO-led generational transitions. And each completed diligence cycle teaches the next one to ask smarter questions.

A few examples already embedded inside the playbooks:

• Housing allowances paid off-contract: flagged early as a social security risk, now standard screening across employment agreements.

• Ambiguous change-of-control clauses: now a top-priority review item in customer, supplier, and loan agreements.

• Contract volume management: a recent deal had 4,000+ active customer agreements on just 700k EBITDA. AI checks reduced months of manual review to hours.

“As we do more of these, our document request lists get better. The checks get stronger. We’re capturing market knowledge and applying it consistently.”

Better deals, better terms, fewer surprises

One CEO in residence recently identified inconsistent change-of-control language across key customer contracts while valuation was still in negotiation. Instead of discovering the issue post-SPA, he worked hand-in-hand with the seller to fix terms early and protect revenue continuity.

“That is the beauty of front-loading diligence. We build the deal together with the seller, not rewrite the agreement the night before signing.”

The shift also avoids unnecessary external legal cost. Confirmatory counsel now validates structured findings rather than redoing analysis from scratch. And when the wrong deal appears, WAD Capital can say no before momentum and legal costs forces a yes.

Built to scale, built to protect Europe’s SMEs

WAD Capital expects to support 100 CEOs in residence in the coming years, each completing around three acquisitions. That means roughly 3,000 preserved companies instead of 3,000 closures, thousands of jobs protected and an entire SME segment professionalized rather than lost.

Jurimesh enables that ambition at the pace and economics Where WAD Capital operates:

institutional-grade legal diligence without institutional-grade overhead.

The CEOs remain the protagonists of every acquisition. Jurimesh gives them the early legal clarity they need to negotiate smartly, fix risks in time and walk away when the fundamentals aren’t right. That keeps WAD Capital’s mission on track: build a scalable answer to Europe’s succession crisis, one well-executed deal at a time.