You’re getting ready to sell your business. You’ve found a buyer and want to get the process moving as quickly as possible. Here are our top 3 tips for speeding up the process, without losing any security.
1. Prepare your parts
Before buying your business, the buyer will conduct a kind of audit of your business, looking at every aspect of your business. You will need to provide a whole range of documents, such as tax and accounting documents for the last few years, employee employment contracts, a list of current contracts, etc.
More often than not, the customer is missing documents. This may be the general terms and conditions of sale of a leasing contract that the customer has lost and that the leasing company has not returned despite repeated requests, a lost employment contract, a certificate from an accountant who is not very responsive.
Our advice is to start, as soon as possible, to take stock of the documents at your disposal, and to look for the missing documents.
2. Purge pre-emptive rights
One of the main reasons for slowing down the sale of a business is the purging of pre-emptive rights.
Pre-emptive rights are the right granted to someone to have priority in the purchase of your business when it is put up for sale. There may be several pre-emptive rights: for employees, for the municipality in certain cases, but also for a co-contractor, if you are a franchisee for example.
To purge a pre-emptive right, you must inform the person holding the pre-emptive right and wait a pre-determined period (usually two months) for them to come forward before you can sell.
However, to move more quickly, you can ask these people for certificates stating that they do not intend to acquire your business, leaving you free to proceed with the sale before the pre-emption period expires.
It is therefore particularly important to identify existing pre-emption rights early on in the process, in order to deal with this formality as a matter of priority.
3. Notify your Board as soon as possible
As a matter of economics, many company directors wait until they are as far along in the process as possible before notifying their lawyer.
However, in the event of a dispute, your lawyer will not have been able to review the letter of intent, or even the promise to sell.
If you try to make small savings, you could end up with big losses.
If you are planning to sell your business, we strongly recommend that you discuss the matter with your usual advisor as soon as possible.
What’s more, this will enable him to get organized and guarantee you maximum reactivity during the busy times of the transfer.
A well-prepared business sale can be completed quickly. Whether you have a simple project in mind, or the sale of your business is well advanced, you’ll save time by turning to a lawyer who specializes in this area.
Our firm, DESRUMAUX AVOCATS, is at your disposal to assist you in this particular operation.
