Chartered Accountants
We’ve Supported Clients With Business Disposals Worth Millions Of Pounds
Over recent years our EQ Taxperts and Corporate Finance Team have assisted our clients with business disposals worth hundreds of millions of pounds.
We prepare our clients for selling their business, support them through the sale process and provide an after care service to ensure great outcomes, both commercially and in relation to tax.
Below are some examples of how we’ve helped our clients through the sale of their business.
Business purchase and subsequent sale
Having supported our client 5 years previously to acquire the business, we helped them sell their business for 6 times that amount, following a sale of its entire share capital to an external buyer. Our role was as follows:
- assisted with the due diligence process, including the deal structure;
- provided advice and financial information to secure as high a price as possible, resulting in proceeds of nearly £4 million;
- ensured that all shareholders secured Entrepreneurs’ Relief (ER), a tax rate of only 10%;
- ensured the retention of some assets by the shareholders was achieved in a tax efficient manner.
Disposal of company with different share classes
We recently provided tax advice to a number of shareholders on the disposal of their company for £9 million. Each shareholder had a unique mix of different classes of shares, with some acquired through an EMI scheme EQ had previously set up. Our advice helped allow the following:
- some of the shareholders to exit the business entirely;
- some of the shareholders to remain in the business, receiving shares in the acquiring company instead of cash;
- structuring disposals in the most tax-efficient way in order to maximise ER and rollover relief, enabling some shareholders to defer a large portion of their chargeable gains.
Restructuring and asset extraction
We provided advice to clients who were considering selling their businesses, which consisted of multiple companies, each with different shareholders and directors, with high value non-trading assets also held in the companies. We assisted as follows:
- we provided advice and guidance through the process of restructuring ownership to create a group structure and a tax efficient extraction of non-trading assets from the company;
- assisting with the sale of the new streamlined company, with proceeds over £9 million;
- secured ER for the owners, following our proactive restructuring advice.
EQ believes in planning to sell, and making it easy and tax efficient to do so. We maintain regular client contact and ensure any required action is taken immediately to support optimum results. For more information, advice or to discuss your circumstances, please get in touch with our Transaction Tax team today.
Later, we’ll release a series of articles identifying common business structuring problems and how you might resolve these.
