Corporate Finance Consulting: Financing, Valuation and Transactions That Hold Up to Outside Scrutiny

Corporate finance — also called corporate finance advisory, and transaction advisory where a deal is involved — deals with the capital side of a company: where funds come from, what they cost, what commitments they create and what a business or a shareholding is worth. It differs from controlling not in the underlying figures but in the audience. Here banks, investors, buyers and sellers are reading along, and they read with a date in the diary.

It works against deadlines other people set. A loan maturity, a bid deadline, a closing date, a shareholders’ meeting: the date is fixed before the documents are finished. That changes the order of the work. Whatever has to be evidenced by the cut-off date comes before whatever would be technically more elegant — and whatever cannot be evidenced by then belongs in the open, named as such, rather than estimated.

It makes numbers auditable, not merely plausible. A plan that convinces internally falls over in an outside review the moment the derivation is missing. On the capital side the result of a calculation counts for less than its traceability: where each assumption comes from, and what happens if it does not hold.

It works in scenarios rather than target figures. Anyone who models a financing only for the expected path finds out where the agreement tears only when it matters. A capital structure becomes robust when the worse case has also been calculated, documented and described in its consequences for interest cover, repayment and the covenants that were agreed.

What it does not do. It does not decide whether to sell, buy or invest — that stays with management and the shareholders. It replaces neither a statutory audit nor tax or legal advice, and no decision by a provider of capital; every financing, valuation and transaction turns on the individual case and needs review by the bodies responsible for it. And it promises no price: what a company achieves in the market is decided by the field of buyers.

Corporate finance support through our network is billed by daily rate, not by transaction volume. The rate hangs on three things: the responsibility carried by the role, the scarcity of the experience, and who the figures are addressed to. Someone who faces banks or investors and carries decisions there sits well above a role that calculates and prepares in the background. Where transaction experience and sector knowledge meet in one profile, the field of candidates narrows further — and that shows up in the rate.

The ranges below are the daily rates published on our own English role pages under Finance & Controlling and M&A & Due Diligence, as of August 2026. Planning and steering profiles — business controlling, FP&A, forecasting, cash flow management — sit at €700 – €1,150 per day. Group and treasury roles carrying close or banking responsibility sit at €800 – €1,300. Transaction-related profiles — M&A advisory, financial and commercial due diligence — sit at €900 – €1,600. For leadership and programme responsibility, meaning interim CFO, post-merger integration and restructuring-related mandates, the published figures run from €1,200 to €2,500. These are orientation values, not fixed prices; the rate for a specific assignment follows from profile, scope, duration and location and is agreed beforehand.

For budgeting, the number of days on site says more than the rate. A bounded second opinion on a valuation or a financing model sits in the low double-digit range of days. Preparing a sale or a refinancing binds a share of capacity over months, usually part time; a mandate in finance leadership runs full time. Deciding early which documents are produced internally and which externally moves the larger part of the budget to where experience is actually missing.

The difference from mandating a bank, an M&A boutique or an audit firm lies less in the level than in the structure. There, the fee is often tied to a closing or to a transaction volume and topped up with retainers or commitment fees; here you pay for working time, whether or not a transaction happens. We do not offer success-based components through this page. Nor do we offer audit and assurance services reserved for licensed professionals — those still require mandating the bodies responsible.