Buying or Selling a Business

In the last few years we have advised on mergers and acquisitions across the sectors: healthcare, professional consulting, finance, food and beverage and property related sectors, on both sides of the Irish Sea.

At times we are acting on the £5 to £10m+ transactions, meeting highly specialised negotiation teams from the various corporate advisory brands in allocating post-completion risk, and setting up data rooms for the gruelling due diligence haul. At other times we might be looking after some smaller business buy-ins and exits, dealing with high street firms less familiar with the share transaction process.

As for the larger offerings, Andrew has over 20 years’ experience including in the transaction teams of a London City firm with high pressure and highly complex public and private company work. With probably the more regular smaller sized deals, we often find a family run business may have earned the interest of a larger brand looking for fast easy market share, or the owner-operators might wish to retire in the knowledge they have handed the reins to a safe pair of hands. From experience over scores of less contested transactions, we try to get it all done and dusted with minimal fuss.

The same principles apply to both, and all types of transactions between: whatever you present to us we will want to be sure we understand your core objectives, then we will act fast, prioritise your needs and protect your interests. Equally, we will not settle into a purposeless ‘deal creep’ or create a veritable paper-fest  if we don’t we need to.

To give you a flavour, recent transactions include:

• share purchase over an agreed period of a company trading as a hostel offering specialist occupation by government departments
• share purchase supported by renegotiated lease of a small Northern Ireland manufacturing business by its Irish competitor
• several reorganisations and share sales of six highly successful residential care homes in England by a branded group operator
• negotiating on the proposed share sale of automation engineering sub-contractor specialists to facilitate an overseas expansion into UK markets
• exit by sale of professional services firm’s client lists on a retirement, finding a mutually agreed balance between recurring income/clawback rights

Do call us to discuss any aspect of buying or selling your business. I think you will find us plain talking and hopefully a chat will be useful, whatever you do from there.