Transactional Support

Critical Decisions

There comes a point in every business when you, the owners and directors, have to make critical decisions regarding its future. These can be about growth and acquisition or, whenever is the best time to realise the fruits of all your work.

Getting these decisions right is critical and yet these are situations that most owners are coming to for the first time.

Understanding Owners

We specialise in guiding owners of businesses through these key, and often, emotive milestones as their business makes leaps in terms of growth or strategic investment or when it finally comes to exiting.

Every transaction has tax implications, whether it's an acquisition, disposal, refinancing or restructuring. Once the strategic priorities have been agreed, we can ensure that the tax implications of the transaction are as efficient as possible.

However, we don’t just seek to help you be confident in your decisions regarding the finances and risk, we also want to help minimise any concerns you may have. We don’t just look after the numbers, we want to make sure you really get what you want from the transaction with the minimum stress.

Property transactions

Property transactions can often be some of the most complex and strewn with unseen pitfalls such as VAT. We are very familiar with property and land transactions and can bring that expertise to your deal.

How we have helped:

• Evaluate the options of buying or renting in order to pursue the most attractive route
• Incentives and rent free periods of occupation
• As the property can be the largest single cost in a property development then any cost which helps reduce that outlay is a bonus. We advise on land remediation claims in order to obtain tax relief funds and help mitigate against the cost of the project.
• We have helped restaurant retail businesses with the acquisition of new sites. Property acquisition advice helped reduce the initial cost of opening.

Family Businesses

Transactions within family businesses always require particularly sensitive handling. We have specialist Family Business Advisers who can support the process of coming to agreement regarding transactions as well as advising on the tax implications.

How we have helped:

• Demerging a family business into two distinct entities to enable two different parts of the family and business to pursue distinct directions
• Mediating between different desires of the different generations of shareholders
• Advising on the issue of different classes of share in a long established retail businesses to better represent the interest of family members and family generations. This allows rewards to be more closely aligned with the time that various family members devote to the business.
• Mediating between the different generations of families within a in order to allow the family to agree the future direction and strategy of their business.

International Transactions

We can advise on cross-border transactions and are part of an international association with advisers in over 50 countries who can provide on the ground insight and support.

How we have helped:

• When helping overseas buyers with UK property and company acquisitions, we navigate them through the acquisition process and ensure they fully understand the regulatory obligations required of them.
• Pre-transactional restructuring is often required for international sales in order to ensure that the business is set up and away appropriate for the acquirer. We have advised on the most appropriate structure of a food manufacturer to assist in its ease of sale.
• Currency hedging on international transactions helps minimise the risk of volatility in the acquisition thereby allowing more certain cashflows.