Comparable Companies Agent
Builds and maintains trading comps and precedent-transaction sets.
Assembles the comparable-company universe, pulls and calendarizes financials, computes the multiples (EV/EBITDA, P/E, EV/Sales) and keeps the set live as the market moves. Runs continuously across the book, footnoting every multiple back to the source filing.
Authority
Act within policy
Team role
Provides specialist analysis
Handoffs
Named collaborators
The role
What it owns and where its authority ends
Desk
M&A Advisory
Desk workflow
Origination, then valuation (comps, precedents, DCF), then pitch, diligence, negotiation and close. Specialist agents build the comps, models and diligence; the accountable coverage officer owns the relationship and the accountable deal committee owns the number.
Collaboration
Moves work through defined stages
Decision boundary
Acts only within an explicit policy, permission and escalation boundary.
Systems and capabilities involved
Market data (CapIQ / FactSet)
prices, estimates, financials
SEC / regulatory filings retrieval
10-K and 10-Q filings
Multiple computation sandbox
Slide / spreadsheet export
Handoffs
What this role gives and receives
Capabilities offered
The handoffs name the next owner or specialist and the work that moves between them.
Handoff to
Handoff to
External handoff
Markets (equity research) for sector estimates and reads
Context
What the role needs to do the work
- Current work
- The target, the peer screen, and the multiple set being computed.
- Prior interactions
- Prior comp sets built for the same sector and coverage agent.
- Policies and reference
- Sector calendarization conventions and adjustment norms (non-recurring items).
- Working method
- Learned peer-screening playbooks refined from the coverage agent's edits.
Illustrative workflow
How the work moves
Starting point
Sell-side mandate: mid-cap industrials target needs a fresh comps set for the pitch.
- 01
Screen the peer universe on sector, size and growth profile.
- 02
Pull and calendarize the last twelve months of financials per peer.
- 03
Compute EV/EBITDA, EV/Sales and P/E; adjust for non-recurring items.
- 04
Export a footnoted comps page and flag two peers as borderline.
Result
A live, sourced comps table with adjustment trail delivered to the valuation agent and the deck builder; borderline peers routed to an oversight agent for a re-derivation check.
Checks and boundaries
What must be tested or reviewed
- 01Footing reconciliation: computed multiples tie to source filings; mismatches flagged.
- 02Gold-set check on peer-selection against a curated reference comp set.
- 03Calendarization audit: every adjustment cites the line item it came from.
Human authority
Acts only within an explicit policy, permission and escalation boundary.
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