Disposals

In either case what’s needed is clear, concise advice ensuring the best outcome for you.

For those not in the business of regularly buying and selling businesses, this often means providing a general sounding board as well as dealing with the detailed legal advice needed.

For those who have significant experience of corporate transactions, we will ensure the legal process is as smooth as possible with as little disruption to the business whilst seeking to ensure the agreements provide the best level of protection for you.

Our substantial line-up of corporate lawyers have in-depth expertise and long experience of advising on all kinds of disposals, including selling early-stage businesses, owner-managed businesses and exits for multi-nationals.

Selling a business often involves a significant amount of due diligence and investigations. Sometimes this unearths problems you were unaware of. Because we are part of a multi-faceted full-service law firm, we can call on expert advice from specialist colleagues on issues identified in areas such as employment, property, intellectual property, tax and pensions (to name a few) to help resolve any issues.

With the business world becoming increasing global, often buyers may be based overseas. This can add on other dimensions as often overseas legal approaches are not the same as in the UK. Having acted on numerous cross-border transactions, we can help you understand these differences and deal with them to your benefit.

In addition, we are members of a worldwide alliance of professional advisors and can tap into that network to help deal with any transaction with an overseas element.

Another possible route to sell a business is to private equity. These types of transactions give rise to significant complications over and above a trade sale. We have a huge depth of experience of such transactions which we can bring to bear to help ensure before embarking on such a journey you have a good understanding of the issues involved.

Often in these deals whilst the price is, of course, of huge significance, there are other considerations that are vitally important such as the size and terms of any stake that you hold in the business after the transaction.

Our clients include owner-managed businesses, plcs, international groups, venture capitalists and private equity houses and because every business is different, we take an individual approach, getting to know you and your company inside out to ensure our advice is as valuable and useful as possible.

Whatever the deal, we have the experience, expertise and the resources to give you the very best advice and guidance, delivered in a pragmatic, no-nonsense manner.

Our services include advice on sales to:

• Management teams
• Overseas acquirers and related tax planning
• Private Equity
• UK corporates

To discuss the future for your business and see how we can help, please get in touch.

Take a look at some previous business sales which we have advised on.