There are transactions that are not measured by their size, but by what they demand. Getting three companies that have competed for years to sell together to the same buyer to agree is one of them. It is not just a legal or tax challenge. Above all, it is an exercise in building trust among parties that have never had to rely on each other before.
At Confianz, we have just closed such a deal. Three express transport companies—Arin Express, Trans Paneuropa, and HTG Express—have unified their position to sell majority stakes to Everwood Capital’s Transport and Logistics Fund. The result is the largest industrial express transport group in Spain, with €100 million in revenue and over 5,000 clients across Europe and North Africa.
But this article is not about that specific deal. It is about how these types of transactions are managed. Because a multi-seller transaction is not just a minor variation of traditional M&A. It is something else entirely.
A market pushing toward consolidation
Spain has 218,000 companies in the transport and logistics sector. Germany, with a considerably larger economy, has 98,000. This fragmentation explains why funds look at Spain with such interest. There is an opportunity to consolidate—adding medium-sized pieces to build operators at a European scale.
The problem is that these medium-sized pieces, taken one by one, often do not reach the size that private equity looks for. But together, they do. Hence the rise of multi-seller transactions. Companies that individually would not attract institutional capital discover that together they can negotiate on different terms.
For family businesses, this opens a door that did not exist before. For advisors, it presents a very specific challenge.
The hard part is not the technical work
When you have a single seller, you can assume their interests are aligned. When you have three, you can assume nothing. Each company comes with its own history, partners, sensitivities, and decision-making style. And it comes, moreover, with a history of competition with the other two.
This means that before sitting down to negotiate with the buyer, you must get the sellers to agree among themselves. It seems obvious, but it is not. Any concession you make in the negotiation affects all three differently. What is reasonable for one may be unacceptable for another. What protects one may expose another.
That is why in these transactions it makes no sense for each seller to have their own advisor. You need someone who sees the bigger picture, can propose solutions that work for everyone, and has the trust of all three parties to tell them uncomfortable truths when necessary.
How we approach it at Confianz
Over the years, we have developed a way of handling these deals. It is not a magic formula, but it is an order that works.
First, make sure the sellers share a common vision of what they want to achieve. Before drafting anything, before discussing valuations or warranties, it is necessary to know what is non-negotiable for each and where there is room for flexibility. If this is not clear from the beginning, cracks will appear at the worst moment.
Second, define the scope of the transaction clearly. The three companies are not the same. They have different clients, different structures, different geographic presence. You have to build a coherent narrative that the buyer can understand and value, without erasing the differences.
Third, allocate risks. Each company comes with its own issues: tax contingencies, problematic contracts, exposures of all kinds. The warranty system must protect the buyer without any seller feeling that they are taking on the problems of the others.
What the books don’t cover
M&A manuals talk about due diligence, valuation, and contractual structures. They rarely mention that behind every seller is a person who has spent twenty or thirty years building their company and is now deciding to let it go.
In a multi-seller transaction, that emotional dimension is multiplied by three. And you also have to manage what happens among them—the suspicions, the comparisons, the feeling that someone else is getting a better deal. It is all there, and if you don’t address it, it can blow the deal apart.
Transactions that succeed are the ones that take care of this dimension—not as an extra, but as something central.
Why this matters
The Spanish market will continue to see multi-seller transactions. The fragmentation of many sectors, generational succession in family businesses, and the interest of funds in building consolidation platforms guarantee that there will be more.
For law firms and advisors, this raises a question: Are you ready to coordinate divergent interests, act as a meeting point between parties that do not trust each other, and combine technical work with people management?
At Confianz, we have been doing exactly that for years. Not because it is easy, but because we believe the real value of advisory work lies there—in the ability to bring together what was once separate.
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