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The origination glossary

Teaser

A brief introduction to a potential transaction, often withholding the target's identity until further access is agreed.

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Definition

A teaser is an initial summary used to introduce a business or transaction opportunity. It may outline services, geographic footprint, financial characteristics, and the type of buyer sought. It often omits the company's identity to manage confidentiality, although anonymous presentation is not a requirement of the term.

Because a teaser compresses information, its language is particularly easy to overread. A description of repeat customers does not establish contracted recurring revenue. A broad regional label does not establish an exact service territory. Financial figures require their own definitions and periods. The purpose of the document is to invite an informed next step, not to answer every diligence question or establish the target's fit conclusively.

In origination work

Use a teaser to identify which mandate questions appear relevant and which information is missing. Keep its claims attributed to the presenting party. If identity is withheld, do not merge it into an existing company record based on a plausible name guess. Record an opportunity separately until authorised disclosure or reliable identifying evidence establishes the connection. Preserve restrictions on circulation and avoid turning clues from a confidential process into unsupported public research claims.

What a teaser is for

A teaser is a one or two page summary of a business for sale, written so that it does not name the company. It usually gives the sector, a description of the offering, the geography, headline operating characteristics, and sometimes a size band for revenue or earnings. Its job is to let a recipient decide quickly whether to sign a confidentiality agreement and ask for more. The anonymity protects the seller from employees, customers or competitors learning of a sale before it is decided.

Because it is written to be anonymous, a teaser can describe a business in terms vague enough to fit several companies. "A leading regional provider with more than a decade of operating history" is a statement about the writer's choices. Specific details are what make a teaser useful and also what make it potentially identifying, so advisers balance the two.

Resolving the anonymous company

Teams sometimes try to identify the company behind a teaser before signing. That can be a legitimate research task and can also breach the spirit of the process if the seller or adviser has asked for no attempts at identification. Follow any instruction in the document. Where identification is permitted, treat it as a hypothesis: several companies may match, and an incorrect match risks contacting the wrong business or disclosing a confidential process.

The disciplined approach is to list the features that could be matched, such as industry code, region, size indicators and years in operation, and then test candidates against registry, licence and filing records. Record the evidence for and against each candidate and label the result as a possible match until the seller confirms. Entity resolution methods apply: an unconfirmed match is a probability, not an identity.

Using teaser content responsibly

Treat teaser claims as seller statements and keep them in a separate field from independent findings. Size bands are especially easy to misuse: a band describes the seller's presentation, and a figure taken from it should not be passed on as a measured fact. Where a teaser mentions growth or margins, ask whether the period and definition are stated, and compare any earnings measure only with figures that have the same definition.

Keep a record of the teaser's date and source channel. A teaser circulated six months ago may describe a business that has since been sold, withdrawn or relaunched with different terms. A pipeline that retains the date can show which opportunities were live when the team saw them, and avoids chasing something that no longer exists.

Related terms

Further reading

Sources and further reading

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