Esbee Information

Esbee is a UK consultancy working on the people questions that ownership transitions expose. We advise sponsors, boards, and management teams before a business goes to market, during diligence, and through execution and integration. The people layer is where deal value most often leaks, and it receives the least scrutiny. Financial and legal diligence are assumed; people diligence is commissioned late and read by nobody in the investment committee. The management team that cannot scale, the comp structure incentivising the wrong outcomes, the key-person concentration nobody priced, the TUPE liability handled as an HR process rather than a commercial negotiation: these turn a good thesis into a disappointing hold period. • People VDD & Exit Readiness — for sellers, 12 to 24 months out. What a buyer will discount you for, surfaced and fixed before they find it. Management assessment, second-line depth, comp architecture, employment liabilities, and the remediation that follows. • People Due Diligence — for buyers, scoped to an exclusivity window. Management quality, retention and key-person risk, culture and integration risk, employment and TUPE exposure. Fixed fee, delivered to the deal timetable. • M&A Advisory: TUPE & Integration — once the deal is agreed. TUPE on share and asset deals and service provision changes. Day 1 readiness, org design across the combined business, harmonisation, and retention of the people the deal was priced on. We also handle senior people situations carrying commercial consequence in their own right: board and co-founder exits, settlement negotiations, tribunal preparation, and organisational design where the operating model no longer fits the business. Engagements are principal-led. Project, retained, or embedded. Initial conversations are confidential and without obligation. Esbee is the trading name of SB HR Ltd, registered in England & Wales (Company No. 16567477). info@esbeehr.co.uk | esbeehr.co.uk