How should I prepare before meeting a merchant banker, and what should I ask?

In the first meetings, a merchant banker is reading the company: three years of accounts, the shareholding and its history, borrowings, related-party dealings, pending cases, and the numbers that describe the business. Where these are in order, the talk moves quickly to the issue itself.

You choose which meeting you walk into. Arrive able to state your revenue, margins, customer concentration and growth without notes, and ask who will work on your file day to day, what is needed by when, and how long it will realistically take from today.