Exit & succession planning
Structuring the business and your shareholding well ahead of a sale or handover.
The work that makes an exit worth having starts years earlier
Leaving a business well is a project, not an event. Whether you are selling to a third party, backing your management team or passing the business to family, the questions are the same: is the business ready to run without you, is the shareholding structured for the outcome you want, and will the proceeds land where you intend.
Most of the reliefs that matter carry conditions measured in years, not weeks. Business Asset Disposal Relief, holdover and Business Property Relief all depend on how the shares and the trade were arranged long before anyone signed anything. We look at the position early enough to change it.
A business that only works because you are in it every day is worth less to everyone, including you.
What’s included
Exit readiness review
An honest assessment of what a buyer or successor would find, and what to fix first.
Shareholding structure
Share classes, articles and shareholder agreements arranged for the outcome you want.
Relief qualification
Business Asset Disposal Relief, holdover and Business Property Relief tested against the conditions in good time.
Management buy-outs
Structuring and funding a sale to the team already running the business.
Family succession
Passing shares and control across generations, with the tax and the family conversation handled together.
Life after exit
Personal tax, pensions, investment and inheritance planning for the proceeds, arranged before completion.
Four ways out, and they are not equivalent
A trade sale, a management buy-out, a family handover and a gradual withdrawal give different answers on price, timing, certainty and how much of the business survives in the form you built. We set out what each one would mean for you before you commit to a direction.
How planning an exit works
Position
Where the business and the shareholding stand today, and what you want the exit to achieve.
Plan
The route out chosen, with the tax, structural and management actions it requires set against a timeline.
Preparation
Structure changes made, reporting tightened and the qualifying conditions put in place and left to run.
Transaction
The sale or handover executed, then the personal planning for what comes after it.
Exit and succession questions we get asked
Three years is comfortable, two is workable, and under one year limits what can be done. The qualifying conditions for the main reliefs are measured in years, so time is the one input we cannot create later.
It reduces the capital gains tax rate on qualifying disposals up to a lifetime limit. Whether you qualify turns on the shareholding, your officer or employee status and the trading status of the company, all tested over a qualifying period before the sale.
Yes. A management buy-out is usually funded from a mix of company cash, external debt and deferred consideration. It gives more control over the outcome than a trade sale, and rather more attention needs to go into whether the team is ready.
Through a combination of share classes, trusts and the will, so the ones running the business hold the equity and the others are provided for another way. It works far better agreed openly in advance than discovered afterwards.
That is part of the same plan. We look at the personal tax position, pensions, investment structure and inheritance tax before completion, because some of it is much harder to arrange once the money has arrived.
Start the exit conversation early.
The reliefs that matter most are the ones with a qualifying period.