The firm has offices at both ends of the province — The Ormond Building on Ormond Quay in Dublin 7 and 2 Rose Inn Street in Kilkenny — and handles most business sale work on the documents, by telephone, email and video.
Same Law, Different Buyers
Business sales, warranties, consents and completion are matters of national law and identical in every county. What varies across the province is who the buyer is likely to be, and that changes the seller’s position. In and around Dublin, trade buyers, private equity interest and structured processes are more common, which gives a well-prepared seller genuine leverage and gives an unprepared one a very thorough examination — institutional buyers run proper due diligence and negotiate warranties and limitations as routine. Further out, sales are more often to a local trade buyer, to management, or within the family, where the process is less formal but the funding question is harder and the relationship survives the deal. Both need the same two things settled early: the structure, with your accountant on the tax, and an honest view of what a buyer’s solicitor will find.
Where Deals Actually Stall
Rarely on the drafting. Consents are the usual cause — landlord consent to a lease assignment, a bank or lessor exercising a change-of-control right, key customers whose contracts require consent to assignment, a franchisor who must approve the incoming owner. Funding is the other, because a lender has its own requirements and timetable and frequently sets the pace of the whole transaction. Then due diligence findings that need investigating, which is a self-inflicted delay in the sense that most of them were findable in advance. The way to protect a timetable is to identify every consent at the outset and start those processes in parallel with the documents rather than sequentially after them, and to have closed the obvious gaps before a buyer runs their list. That is the difference between a completion date that holds and one that moves twice.
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