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Exit planning for your business

You’ve put years of hard work into building your business. So, when the time comes to think about moving on, getting the exit right matters, both financially and personally. Whether you’re ready now or planning years ahead, we’re here to help you realise your aspirations.

Our exit planning advisers take time to understand you, your goals, your timeline and what success looks like for you. The process starts with:

An in-depth fact-finding session
Understanding your personal objectives
Reviewing your business from a strategic, operational, and financial perspective.

This provides the context for our analysis and valuation, ensuring your succession exit plan is tailored to you. If you’d like to start shaping your strategy, let’s have a discussion.

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Ellie Rochira, Senior Analyst in PEM's Corporate Finance team

Planning your business sale

It’s time to get under the bonnet of your business and understand its value. The process typically includes a thorough review, covering your financials, growth track record, value drivers, and the wider market you operate in.

Crucially, we enable you to see your business through a buyer’s eyes. Our advisers help to articulate key selling messages and identify areas of concern that could affect the sale price.

Once the analysis is complete, we’ll present a clear exit strategy. You then agree on goals and next steps to get ready for sale – and we’ll check progress against those targets over six to 18 months.

If you’re ready to make a plan, please talk to our experts about your exit goals.

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David Ball, Partner in PEM's Corporate Finance team

Business succession planning

Deciding who will take over your business when you retire is a big decision. It’s not just a business; it’s your legacy. Great succession planning can reward you financially, protect your business, and give your family member or new owner the best chance of success.

Personal motives are at the heart of business succession. With our team of succession planning advisers by your side, you can hand down your business in a way that’s realistic, rewarding, robust and meets your goals. We’ll help with strategies to:

Train your successor
Facilitate a business purchase
Manage the transition
Ensure a successful future.

Our team is here to help you get started.

Speak to an expert

Darren Hagan, Director in PEM's Corporate Finance team

Family business succession planning

Who do you want to pass your company on to? It might be a generational business transfer, a family and management buyout (FamBO), or a vendor-initiated management buyout (VIMBO). Whoever is taking on the business, we craft ownership succession buyouts that work for everyone involved. That means a valuation that reflects the hard work you’ve put in, new opportunities, and the future of your business.

Succession planning should be a satisfying, stress-free experience – after all, it doesn’t happen every day. It should be a proud moment for you and your successor. If you’d like to get the ball rolling, please get in touch.

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Know your worth, plan your exit

Transactions.

Business Valuation.

Tax.

FAQs

What is a business exit strategy?

Exit planning is for business owners who want to realise value from their hard work and potentially step back from day-to-day management. Our advisers can help you put an exit strategy together to work towards this, discuss your options, and allow you to get the most out of your hard work.

Your exit plan will include a valuation of your business, identifying actions needed to maximise value and achieve your objectives.

Understanding the preferred route to exit can help you achieve clarity and peace of mind. It will provide insights into how your business is valued, as well as key strategic actions to work towards.

What’s included in an exit planning review?

This is a deep dive into your business, which includes:

Research: a review of your company’s history, marketplace trends, and commercial arrangements.
Personal drivers: your ambitions and values, and what a successful exit would look like for you.
Industry overview and M&A activity: understanding opportunities and threats to your business and assessing the appetite for market transactions.
Trading history and forecasts: looking at your track record, articulating growth opportunities, and identifying other key considerations for the valuation process.
Value drivers: how to optimise exit value by assessing growth plans, commercial opportunities, and threats to consider.
Valuation: analysing current business trading and market activity from proprietary databases to formulate a market valuation. By discussing future growth plans and recent performance with you, we’ll help you understand how timing and positioning could drive value.

When is the best time to exit my business?

We’ll help you understand this. Timing is everything when it comes to maximising value and increasing the chances of a successful exit. We consider your goals, business readiness, growth plans, and M&A activity.

We will work with you to weigh up the pros and cons of each option and identify the landscape of potential buyers.

If you are interested in starting to plan for an exit or succession, please get in touch to discuss how we can make this process a seamless transition.

How can PEM support ownership succession planning?

We’ll design a buyout that suits everyone, considering business valuation, ownership structure, finance options and tax. Your successor will also have our support with funding options – ranging from bank and equity finance to loan notes, which are essentially an IOU to you.

We can bring in reliable solicitors and business tax experts to ensure your business succession is watertight and tax-efficient.

Does PEM help with the completion of a succession buyout?