Exit Readiness Starts on Day 1, Not with the Investment Banker

Building on my previous post about how to legally bring a PE-owned portfolio company across the finish line, I want to challenge a persistent myth:

An exit does not start when investment bankers are engaged. Exit readiness starts on Day One, immediately upon acquisition. Why? Because many warranties look far back, regardless of ownership. Anti-bribery, antitrust, AML, data protection, tax, sanctions. Often five years or more. Issues from the past can resurface at exit, long after management or ownership has changed.

If you wait until the sell-side process begins, you risk being surprised. By the buyer’s diligence. Or by your own. Exit readiness therefore means:

a) Structuring the business for saleability, including early carve-outs of non-sellable or sanctions-exposed assets

b) Identifying and stopping questionable practices early

c) Remediating legacy issues and risk long before they become deal topics

d) Building credible risk mitigation narratives, not defensive explanations under pressure

e) Maintaining clean, retrievable records where facts can be proven, not reconstructed years later

In short: run your own internal sell-side diligence early. At exit, there is no time to fix what should have been prepared years before.