Velinor is a UK deal origination firm, based in Bath, that helps private equity funds, search funds, and corporate acquirers find off-market acquisition targets in the £1M-£30M lower mid-market. The company was founded by James Lang, who spent 20+ years in the Royal Signals before building and exiting his own business, and Ben Brand, a former UK military intelligence specialist in data analysis and pattern recognition. Both had seen the same problem from different angles: buyers were all chasing the same handful of publicly marketed deals while advisors launched processes that attracted a dozen competing bidders and inflated multiples.
The data to find better deals already existed. Velinor's engine tracks over 5.6 million active UK companies through Companies House, scoring each one across 24 proprietary transaction-readiness signals. In 2025, it detected 81,833 ownership changes, the vast majority of which, over 92%, happened without a broker or intermediary. These off-market transactions never appear on a marketplace or in an advisor's brochure. For most buyers, they were invisible.
The data to find them existed. It was scattered across Companies House filings, public records, and corporate registries. Ownership changes, director departures, accounts going dormant, PSC transfers, age-based succession signals. All of it was there, sitting in plain sight. Nobody was connecting it at scale.
James brought the commercial edge, having built and sold a business himself, he understood what makes an owner ready to have that first conversation. Ben built the intelligence engine: a system that tracks 5.6 million UK companies, scores each one across 24 proprietary transaction-readiness signals, and identifies which businesses are approaching a deal event before an advisor gets involved. The same discipline they both learned in the military, applied to a different domain: find the pattern, act on the signal, move first.
Enrique de la Barrera joined as CMO, bringing experience from founding three specialist agencies and building high-performing commercial teams. His focus: making sure the right buyers hear about Velinor and that the brand communicates the rigour behind the data.
The first conversation, before anyone else is at the table, is where multiples stay reasonable and deal terms favour the buyer. That is the window Velinor is built to open.
