Selling a business in New Zealand can take anywhere from three months or more. Depending on the type of business and the amount of perceived risk will govern the size of the audience and their appetite to transact quickly.
Selling a business in New Zealand can take anywhere from three months or more. Depending on the type of business and the amount of perceived risk will govern the size of the audience and their appetite to transact quickly.
Sales that go faster usually had a buyer waiting. Sales that take longer usually started before the business was ready, which is the single most common reason a process drags.
Before anything else there is an honest assessment of what the business is worth and whether now is the right time. That means understanding the business in its entirety and agreeing a value range that will stand scrutiny from a buyer’s due diligence team.
Some of these conversations end with a recommendation to wait twelve or eighteen months and fix two or three things first. That advice is worth more than a listing.
Getting the business ready to be examined. Accounts finalised and consistent, add-backs evidenced, contracts located and current, the lease dealt with, obsolete stock written off, and any dispute or liability documented rather than discovered.
An information memorandum is the document that tells a qualified buyer what the business is, how it makes money and why it is being sold. It has to be informative and accurate, with enough of the right content to engage the right buyer, and without giving away the intellectual property that makes the business work.
It is written to be released in stages. A buyer sees a preliminary overview first, enough to know whether the business fits their acquisition criteria, and the commercially sensitive material follows only once they have proved genuine intent and signed a confidentiality agreement.
In an off-market sale this does not start with an advertisement. It starts with a database of buyers who have already told us what they are looking for and what they can fund. More than 70% of our completed sales go to a buyer who was already on that register before the business came up.
Almost every potential buyer is vetted face to face before they see anything sensitive: do they have the financial means to complete, and do they have the skillset to run it. An owner should only ever meet a handful of buyers, and every one of them should be real.
Offers in this market are usually conditional on due diligence, finance, lease assignment and sometimes landlord or franchisor consent. The price matters, but so does the conditions list, the deposit, the settlement date and what the owner is expected to do after settlement.
The buyer verifies everything they have been told and looks again at every part of the business to establish whether it will be the same, better or worse under their ownership once you have gone. This is where prepared businesses separate from unprepared ones.
Conditions come off one at a time, finance is confirmed, the lease is assigned and the sale and purchase agreement goes unconditional. Settlement follows on the agreed date, with stock usually counted and valued at or near settlement.
Almost every deal in this range includes a handover period, often one to three months, sometimes with a longer consultancy arrangement. Agree what it involves and what it is worth during negotiation, not afterwards. A vague handover clause is a dispute waiting to happen.
Every deal we do has an accountant and a lawyer working independently for both sides. Deals do not get done if they do not make sense to the professionals involved, so the commercial logic has to be sound before it ever goes to market.
No, and for a straightforward sale to a known buyer such as a family member, a manager or a competitor you already deal with, a good accountant and a good solicitor may be enough. A broker earns their fee where you need competitive tension between buyers, where you need the sale kept quiet, or where you do not have a buyer and finding the right one is the whole job.
Not at the start, and not all of them at once. Almost every sale in this range is conducted off market for exactly this reason. Key staff are usually told late in the process, once a buyer is unconditional or close to it, and often the incoming owner is part of that conversation.
Buyer activity is strongest from February to June and again from September to November. The more important timing question is your own numbers: a business sells best on a finalised set of accounts showing stable or improving earnings, so the end of a good financial year is usually a better trigger than any particular month.
A confidential conversation with one of our brokers, at no charge. You will get a straight answer, including if the answer is to wait.
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