Depending on the positioning of your company and the associated future prospects, but also on your personal preferences, either a strategic investor or a financial investor can be the optimal partner for your company succession. Our recommendation in this regard is: Start weighing up without prejudice and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of different investors with us. We will discuss the situation of your company and your personal preferences with you and point out the investors that best suit you.

We have a large network of suitable buyers in numerous industries and are always able to locate the optimal partner for you. Our database of over 600 qualified national and international financial investors and family offices enables us to find the most suitable successor for you from this group of buyers as well.

What we cannot recommend to you? Getting involved in an exclusive deal with only one interested party. This significantly restricts your freedom of choice and deprives you of the opportunity to find the best partner for you in terms of purchase price and many other general conditions through ongoing comparisons

If you are planning an external business succession, i.e. you want to sell your business to a person outside the family or to an external company, you should follow several recommendations.

1. First of all, you should start preparing the sales process in good time. This refers both to the organisational and economic development or restructuring of your business and to your own career and life planning after the sale. Both topics usually require some time in advance, which you should take into account.
2. Form a good team in your company in good time, one that you can trust and that will support you. When planning the timing of your sales process, please take into account that this process takes an average of 9 months. During this time it is extremely important that your operative business runs very well and according to the business plan. Otherwise, potential buyers will quickly become concerned and you will offer a target for a reduction in the purchase price. In addition to your operational tasks, you will also have to deal with transaction-related tasks, such as management meetings with potential buyers, purchase price negotiations together with your M&A advisor or the compilation of documents for a due diligence. This double burden can be cushioned by having a good team within the company.
3. be prepared for a buyer to expect a qualified post-acquisition transition. This includes that you are actively available to the company for a transition period after the sale, of which as managing director at least until a successor has been found for you and has been sufficiently trained.
4. make your company attractive to potential buyers by ensuring that it is well organised, has clear business processes and has a well-functioning management team. Potential buyers will be looking for a well-established business that allows for a smooth transition. This includes making sure that you have a strict separation between corporate and private affairs so that there is no compliance issue in the sale process.
5. ensure that all financial records and accounting data of your business are thoroughly prepared, digitally accessible and always up to date. A transparent, optimally daily updated and detailed controlling system with turnover, cost and margin analyses on a customer, project or product basis will convince any potential buyer and significantly increase the achievable purchase price for your business.
6. If you see employees in your company with potential for management, you should build them up in good time and present them to the buyer as your operational successors. Likewise, you should have implemented a qualified second management level to which you can delegate all relevant tasks and their responsibilities. Keyword: "I can easily go on holiday for three weeks without having to take care of the business."
7. it is imperative to seek professional support from an M&A advisor at an early stage. Even before the start of a sales process, for example, we will give you a secure feeling for an achievable purchase price, even without a cost. We discuss with you the right time to start or the feasibility of wishes that are important to you for your business succession. Because we also have a high interest in seeing your targets come true.

As a successful entrepreneur, you know your company and your industry inside out! However, the sale of a company cannot be compared with any activity from your operative business and even for your tax advisor corporate transactions are rather rare and do not belong to his core competence.

In contrast, your M&A advisor has extensive and long-standing experience in organising and structuring a company succession. He will guide you safely, very professionally and with a lot of experience through the entire process of your business succession. This includes, for example

The answer is: YES. We successfully conclude over 95% of our company successions for our clients. Why? Because we talk to you in detail and conduct "expectation management" before we take on the mandate. We give you a reliable indication of the purchase price you can achieve, talk to you about the entire sales process, your tasks and all the activities we undertake for you as advisors. Last but not least, we show you very concrete ideas about who might be suitable as a buyer for your company succession. As a rule, strategic investors as well as financial investors or so-called family offices come into question as buyers. We have long-standing relationships with well over 600 investors. We know the decision-makers, we know which sectors are currently being invested in, the sizes and the conditions. This distinguishes us from many of our market competitors and gives you security for your company succession.

Because various problem areas or obstacles can arise in the context of a business succession. Business sales are complex transactions that require careful planning and execution as well as good legal protection. As a successful entrepreneur, you usually have little detailed knowledge of the many pitfalls and their negative consequences in the context of a sale transaction. But there are many things you can prepare for very well in advance.

Professionally prepared sales documents must contain all the information necessary to enable a potential buyer to make a non-binding but concrete purchase offer. Missing or unfortunate information here can lead to a buyer's misjudgement and thus to unexpectedly low or incorrect purchase price offers, possibly even to rejections.

The right buyer must be found who is both willing to pay the desired purchase price and meet the general conditions you desire. The lack of suitable buyers can slow down the sales process, possibly stop it or lead to a significant re-evaluation of the sales strategy. As a rule, a professionally identified group of buyers is much larger than you might think from your operational point of view.

Due diligence is a not inconsiderable burden on the seller. Every prospective buyer conducts a thorough acquisition due diligence with regard to business model, finances, tax, company law, technology and, if applicable, the environment, in order to identify and verify all relevant information about the company. This process is very labour-intensive and time-consuming for both buyer and seller, as extensive documentation and information must be obtained, provided and analysed. For this, a seller needs discipline and stamina as well as good advisors to be able to meet the information needs of a prospective buyer. A frequently seen effect of poorly conducted due diligence on the part of the seller is a reduced purchase price offer compared to the first offer, which some sellers then accept out of necessity.

Sellers and prospective buyers often have different ideas about the value of the company and the amount of the purchase price. These differences often require creative bridging mechanisms as a compromise solution for both sides. Professional M&A advisors can mediate extremely well here and bring about acceptable solutions for both sides.

Towards the end of the sale process, the commercial agreements are cast into contracts and you need to find a highly experienced lawyer who specialises in business succession. However good your personally known lawyer may be for your company in day-to-day business, he will always be inferior to an M&A specialist under the typical time pressure of a contract negotiation and will not be able to ensure the successful conclusion. It is therefore strongly advisable to engage a specialist lawyer specialised in M&A transactions to draft the contract.

The best time to settle your business succession depends on various factors. Basically, a good time to sell is whenever your business has a strong financial performance and stable growth trends. Potential buyers will be more interested in a business that shows positive results and a successful vision for the future.

In addition, it is advantageous to sell during a period when your industry is positively valued and a promising future is forecast. Favourable market conditions facilitate the sales process and increase the value of your business.

Your personal goals and life circumstances also play an important role in determining the right time to sell. If you are already well past retirement age, a buyer will tend to be cautious about the purchase price because he believes your room for manoeuvre is limited. If you retire at too young an age, he may suspect the reasons for this in the business model of your company; in this case it is therefore important to openly explain your personal reasons for the sale.

A good time to sell the business is also when you have sufficiently developed, prepared and trained a possible internal successor.

Medium-sized family entrepreneurs have usually optimised their annual financial statements from a tax point of view. However, this approach is not always optimal for a company sale and a high purchase price. In this respect, free yourself from tax optimisation practices and show the financial strength of your company!