If you wanted to have a chance of buying the restaurant chain Las Iguanas when it was put up for sale by mid-market private equity firm Bowmark Capital in 2015, you would have had to get in there early. Very early. The firm only invited companies to bid that had been assessing the company for at least three years.

This approach is part of a wider change that is happening within private equity M&A processes. Due to intense competition for the best assets, private equity firms are tracking businesses they want to buy for longer, bankers are being asked to sound out buyers at an ever-earlier stage and, once sale processes kick off, only a select group of the most serious bidders are invited to the table.