Planning for the future

The original piece set out pre-sale and post-sale considerations: Entrepreneurs’ Relief / Business Asset Disposal Relief, pensions, replacing benefits, inheritance tax when shares become cash, and what to do with proceeds. Those questions belong with the accountant and the tax adviser. R W Progressive will not take that mandate.

What the Chair is for: a business that can be diligenced. Structure that does not collapse when the founder is out of the room. Numbers the board can trust. A story a buyer will underwrite. Three years is short if those things start on the day the agent is appointed.

Before the adviser is hired

Work on the business. Appoint if a sale, succession or investment is real. Twenty-four days a year is cheaper than a failed process. If the horizon is five years and the owner wants PE or a listing as an option, that is the five-year programme inside this practice — still Jayesh in the Chair.