Key Points for Selling and Buying a Business

10th July, 2019

There is always an overriding commercial driver or drivers for selling and buying a business.

For a seller, these could be retirement, the realisation of value or lack of capital to invest and grow the business to the next level. For a buyer, it could be about synergies with other businesses and expansion.

Whatever the commercial drivers, there will be a number of key points which the parties will need to consider and agree in the early stages of a transaction, such as: whether the whole company operating the relevant business is to be sold or just certain elements; the price; timing of payments and whether any payments are to be deferred or conditional upon certain events; the liabilities to be assumed by the buyer and those to remain with the seller and whether there are to be any limitations on these; any necessary post-sale restrictions such as non-competition and non-solicitation; and financing.

The parties will need professional legal and accounting/tax advice on structuring and documenting the transaction, this will allow them to consider the advantages and disadvantages of the options available to implement the key points and ensure that such points are adequately documented.

The corporate & commercial team at Aaron & Partners have a huge amount of experience in advising both sellers and buyers across a number of sectors on legal documents and issues related to selling and buying businesses – contact Hugh Strickland for more information on how we can help you.

Hugh Strickland Corporate & Commercial Partner Email: [email protected] Tel: 01743 294 120

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