Buying a business
Buying a business can be the fastest way to grow an already established organisation or enter into a new market place completely.
The challenge is finding a business that meets all your requirements. More often than not there is a lack of quality businesses actually marketing themselves as up for sale.
To give yourself the best chance of a successful acquisition and meeting all your objectives a far more proactive approach is needed.
Areos 'Buying A Business' Process
We take a staged approach that ensures you feel confident and well informed.
1.
Understanding
Listening to your needs and goals
2.
Research
Identifying best fit
and hidden value
3.
The Offer
Negotiating an
acceptable price
4.
Due Diligence
Ensure this is a
worthwhile acquisition
5.
Project Management
Keeping the
process on track
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1. Understanding
The initial stage is firstly all about understanding what your goals are:
/ Your reasons for making a business acquisition
/ Particular industry of interest
/ Size, complexity and location of business
/ The funding you have available to make the acquisition
2. Research
By looking at not just businesses that have a for sale board up, we are able to provide you with a far larger list of potential targets that closely match your requirements. Many businesses owners, although not currently thinking of selling their business, when asked are receptive to the idea.
Identifying businesses that are likely to be the best fit and have the most hidden value is where we prioritise our efforts.
3. The offer
Having identified the best opportunity, probably the hardest part of the process is next, which is negotiating the price. Of course no one wants to pay more than they must and working closely with you, we ensure that we come up with an offer that ensures that you are getting good value for money, is affordable, but crucially is acceptable to the seller.
Deals, whilst often follow a similar structure, are not all the same. With the benefit of working on both sides of the fence, we have seen many different structures. When coming up with a deal proposal we consider the risks involved with the target and how these can be best mitigated.
The terms of the deal need to be set out in the Heads of Terms (“HOTs”). It is well worth spending the time to ensure the HOTs are comprehensive as these will be used as a basis for the Share Purchase Agreement (“SPA”). Well drafted HOTs should give the reader a clear understanding of the deal and there should be no surprises when they receive the first draft of the SPA.
We will work with your legal team to ensure this process works as efficiently as possible.
4. Due diligence
You need to know what you think you are buying is what you are actually getting.
Up until this point, normally the majority of information provided by the seller has been taken at face value. Terms would be agreed subject to satisfactory due diligence.
In depth analysis of the company’s financials and other information will help ensure that everything stacks up and that this is a worthwhile acquisition.
With our accounting and taxation background, unlike many corporate finance companies, we have the expertise to undertake the due diligence in-house. There would be no need for another set of advisers to be engaged.
5. Project management
Buying a business is a time consuming process. We will work with all parties to ensure that the process stays on track, unnecessary distractions are avoided and ultimately help the deal get over the line.
Let’s get started
If you are considering buying a business why not get in touch as we would love to hear more and explain how we can help you on your journey.
Call us on 020 8720 7034