Business Transfer Solicitors — Cork

Selling and buying businesses — structure, documents, consents and completion.

Business sales are national law and a documentary exercise, so a Cork seller does not need a Cork solicitor for it. What they need is an adviser who will settle the structure before heads of terms and tell them honestly what a buyer’s solicitor is going to find.

Owner-Managed, Long-Established, and Entangled With the Owner

The Cork and wider Munster business base is heavily owner-managed — manufacturing, agri-food, engineering, hospitality, professional and contract services — and frequently long-established, sometimes across generations. That produces a distinctive set of due diligence findings. Key customer relationships that have run for twenty years on trust and no written contract. Premises held personally by the owner rather than by the company, or occupied under arrangements nobody ever documented. Equipment financed through facilities guaranteed personally and long forgotten. Accounts prepared conscientiously for tax rather than for sale. And a business whose value is genuinely bound up in the owner’s own relationships. None of that reflects badly on how the business is run. It does mean a buyer cannot see what they are buying, and what a buyer cannot see, they price.

Retirement Exits and the Second Problem

A large share of sales in a long-established business base are retirement exits, and those sellers have two problems rather than one. The transaction converts an illiquid trading company into a substantial liquid asset, which changes the estate position completely — a will drafted when the main asset was the business frequently makes no sense once the business is gone and the proceeds are in an account, and provision that looked balanced when one child worked in the business and others did not may not survive the change. Those questions belong in the same conversation as the deal, not two years afterwards. Richard O’Shea is a TEP of the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners and the firm runs a substantial estates practice alongside this transactional work, which is why the succession side gets raised while it can still be planned rather than after the money has landed.

Two Free Tools Before You Call

The Sale Structure Check walks the asset-versus-share question and what follows from each. The Readiness Check produces a gap list ordered by what will delay the deal or reduce the price. Both run on your own device — nothing stored, and neither is tax advice.

Selling, Buying, or Still Deciding?

What is being sold, whether an accountant has advised on structure, what is signed already, and whether there are employees and a lease. Conflicts are checked first, so name every party in your first email.

Call 01 5827148

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Business Sales in Cork - FAQs

No. The substantive work is documentary — structure, contracts, the lease, the accounts, what is being sold — and is handled by telephone, email and video. Where you would prefer to meet, the firm has offices at The Ormond Building in Dublin 7 and at 2 Rose Inn Street in Kilkenny. All enquiries go through the Dublin number, 01 5827148.

General information, not legal advice. This website contains general information about Irish law on business sales and acquisitions. It is not legal advice and does not create a solicitor—client relationship. Every transaction turns on its own facts — the structure, the documents, the parties, the consents required — and advice on yours requires a consultation.

Nothing here is tax advice, and tax drives structure. The choice between an asset sale and a share sale is very largely a tax question, and it should be settled with your accountant or tax adviser, and by reference to Revenue’s own guidance, before heads of terms are signed rather than afterwards. This firm does not advise on tax, does not state rates, thresholds, reliefs or conditions, and does not indicate any tax outcome.

No valuation advice. This firm does not value businesses, does not suggest multiples and does not advise on price. Valuation is for accountants and corporate finance advisers, and it is a separate exercise from the legal work.

Never both sides of the same deal. The firm acts for buyers and, in separate transactions, for sellers — but never for both parties to the same sale. Conflicts are checked at first contact, before any substantive discussion, which is why the first email should name every individual and entity involved.

No outcome or timeline is promised. Nothing on this site states or implies that a transaction will complete, that a consent will be obtained, that a warranty claim will succeed, or that any deal will proceed to a particular timetable. Where another jurisdiction is involved, the law of that jurisdiction applies to what happens there and requires local advice; this firm advises on Irish law only.

Fees. Fees are agreed in writing with the client at the outset. In contentious business, a solicitor may not calculate fees or other charges as a percentage or proportion of any award or settlement.