Strategic Thinking on Selling your Business - This webinar is FREE to attend
Strategic Thinking on Selling your Business
Selling your business and considering strategic alternatives in a Covid-19 Stricken World
Selling a business for the price you as owner want has always been a very challenging exercise. Timing the sale to reflect the performance of your business and the market in which you operate, needs to coincide with a buoyant economy.
Even if you can tick those boxes the process can be fraught with difficulties. From unscrupulous buyers on a fishing expedition to buyers who make enormous demands on you in terms of commercial, financial and legal due diligence. All of those factors before you get down to negotiating Heads of Agreement. Then the demands by a buyer for an earn out, perhaps non cash consideration plus completion accounts to verify net assets at completion and debates over working capital needs and surplus cash. Then interminable negotiations over lengthy legal documentation.
With the Covid-19 stricken world in which we now find ourselves you may be forgiven for deciding you must keep your head down and wait for things to settle down. That may be a very big mistake. With markets shifting dramatically timing your exit is going to be more critical than ever. You may not yourself have the appetite to raise new equity or debt and might find your competitors going aggressively after you customers or your key employees.
You may also find yourself a distressed seller as you run out of working capital or find yourself running out of energy.
Planning will be absolutely critical whether your time horizons are 3 months or 3 years or more. You may also need to explore being an acquirer instead of just a seller. Perhaps a private equity player may be interested in an investment in your company, releasing some value to you ahead of growth organically or by acquisition? At any rate you would be wise to take the time to consider your options. You may be surprised by what is possible.
Reflecting these challenges and opportunities Sofie Enterprises is delighted to bring you two expert advisers in the field of mergers and acquisitions, distressed sales and long term exit planning.
James Hunt -Founder and Managing Director of Everyman Advisory Limited
James Hunt - is a (non-practising) solicitor with over 35 years experience of acting on the sale and purchase of companies. He is a pioneer of The BOSS, or Business Owners Succession Strategy a method under which the owner plans for an exit around a sale of their business to a management team with the price paid for substantially out of the future cash flow.
Wendy Hart -Head of Grant Thornton’s Thames Valley Corporate Finance and Strategic Advisory team
Wendy Hart - a specialist since 1992 with vast experience of buying and selling businesses and raising debt and equity for owner managed companies. Wendy has significant experience of advising technology businesses.
Dominic Marlow - Managing Partner Sett & Lucas
Dominic Marlow - a seasoned merger and acquisition specialist, who began his career in market research, has been advising owner managers on selling their companies for over 15 years. Using an analytical process called the Business Assessor Dominic can also assist owners of smaller, growing companies in their long term exit planning.
