Sancovia Corporate Finance is a pan-European M&A boutique specializing in buy-and-build services for private equity firms, their portfolio companies, and founders looking to grow through acquisitions. The firm operates as an outsourced origination function for its clients, mapping markets, reaching out to businesses, and generating conversations before transitioning into buy-side advisory to help execute transactions. With offices across Europe and a recently launched Miami presence, Sancovia also offers sell-side M&A, transactional services, and post-merger integration capabilities, primarily out of Germany and Iberia.
Julian Lewis, who established Sancovia's UK office after a tenure with Deloitte's sponsor coverage team, leads efforts and oversees the tools and workflows his team relies on to deliver proprietary deal flow at scale across multiple geographies.
From One Reference Company to Full Market Visibility
When starting Sancovia, Julian was quick to trial private market intelligence platforms including Grata and Sourcescrub. "It was a bit of a no-brainer," Julian said, especially once the two platforms merged. "We live on it, to say the least. Grata is a huge priority for us — I don’t think we could do what we do without it."
One of the features Julian and his team rely on most is Grata's AI-powered Similar Search. "It’s one of the easiest features to use, especially when we’re talking to multiple different founders," Julian said. "The search results encompass the market quite well. What’s really handy is how Grata collates competitors of the businesses we’re looking at. That level of insight gives us more conviction when we’re having conversations."
Julian’s team has also adopted a layered approach and called the ease of use with Grata's built-in AI tools "quite astonishing and really positive," particularly when diving deep into a certain sector. The team has extended these capabilities further by connecting Grata to Claude via its MCP integration: "It’s a gamechanger,” Julian said.
>600 New Targets, 95% Sourced From Grata
The speed gains from Grata have reshaped how Sancovia delivers for its clients. "When we first started, building a list would typically take 2-3 weeks. Now, we can pretty much generate a raw list, our initial starting point, within 30-60 minutes, which then supports us in producing a full target list in just over a week." That initial list is then iterated on with additional research and continuously refreshed using My Signals, which notifies the team when a company crosses a size threshold or meets new criteria.
The volume of outreach reflects this efficiency. "Our team has gone out to nearly 1,000 companies this year. Of those, over 600 are new companies, of which about 95% came from Grata," Julian explained. The quality of contact information in Grata has further accelerated Sancovia’s workflows. Details that once took days to track down are now often available with a single click on a company profile.
Global Reach, Local Coverage
As Sancovia expands into new geographies, from the DACH region to Miami, Grata’s global coverage — now even greater with the acquisition of Valu8 — allows the team to source targets in markets where they may not yet have staff on the ground. Julian noted that even without local coverage in a country like Italy, his team can still pull together a list of companies and start making calls, reducing their dependence on busy counterparts in other offices.
Beyond internal efficiency, Julian sees Grata as a competitive differentiator. "When it's a highly competitive market, making sure you have consistent information with your peers is quite important. Grata gives us the step up for that,” Julian said.
For firms evaluating their sourcing toolkit, Julian's recommendation is straightforward: "You'd be silly not to try Grata. I don't think any other tools have this level of coverage to the same extent. If you are looking for proprietary information on businesses, Grata is the best tool out there that I've used."
