Buying a Business?

Buy a business – boost your company’s growth

Buying a business can be a great way to expand geographically, tap into new customers or even bolt on additional products to your existing range.

Business acquisition – what’s the secret for success?

Before you go about buying a company, make sure you’re clear about what you’re doing and why. Here are just a few things to bear in mind.

1. Do you have the resources? – Don’t underestimate the time and money involved in buying a business. It can easily drain your current company.
2. Find the right business – It might pay to use a professional advisor if you want to buy a business, as they’ll find and deal with the target companies for you.
3. Watch out for nasty surprises – Detailed due diligence is absolutely vital. Get up to date financial and legal information and get it professionally analysed.
4. Look at the management team – Who’s currently in place? Will they stay? Can they cope? And if the owner’s retiring, what will it do to the business?
5. Draw up a business integration plan – Combining a new business with your existing company is never easy so decide how you’ll make the pieces fit.

There are many other things to think about so our top tip is get professional advice! It will make all the difference between a successful acquisition and a business nightmare.

How can Haines Watts help?

We can help with the whole acquisition process or just parts of it. Whatever suits you best. We can:

• Identify and approach target companies
• Agree the deal
• Raise finance
• Do investigation work
• Provide advice on tax
• Project manage the whole thing

The HW Corporate Finance team has handled literally hundreds of company purchases for owner managed and mid-sized corporate businesses. Typical transactions: £1m – £100m.

We don’t have a minimum fee level and will take on any job, provided we’re sure we can make a difference.

Take a look at some of the deals we’ve done. We’ll use this experience to make your deal run smoothly.