If the business has been around for only a few years, management likely won’t be able to find a bank that would finance the buyout. Banks like to see a long history of positive cash flow.
The solution is pretty clear here. It’s not a matter of experience. It’s a matter of capital. Management buyout is one of the four exit strategies for buyout investments in more mature companies. VC investments however, generally are in fledging companies.
Why is a business that’s been around for only a few years and has a short history of positive cash flow more likely to go public than be bought out by its management? Seems counterintuitive to me.
In the CFA curriculum, they stress the points that management buyouts require leverage and that VC companies generally have little (positive) cash flow. This is normally true in real life as well as managers are typically salaried and do not have the capital to acquire the company for which they work. The point of this question is that banks - the providers of leverage - are not willing to lend to a VC-type profile company with few hard assets and likely little cash flow. Ths is why they specify that it is a VC-backed company.