WHO ARE YOU AND HOW CAN THIS BOOK HELP?

The nature and skills of buyers can vary enormously from:

• a management buy in (MBI) team of experienced executives backed by a venture capital house
• a business owner seeking to expand market share by making an acquisition
• an experienced businessperson looking to go it alone for the first time; to
• someone looking to buy a retirement business.

All buyers will, however, have something in common; they will all want their purchase to be a success. At the same time, they will also obviously differ significantly in the scale and complexity of the business they are looking to buy, from the household name to the corner shop, and the resources they have available to help them, from phalanxes of advisers to their own common sense and commercial judgement.

Given these differences, for sake of clarity in my approach to writing this book I have assumed that you are an individual, with a reasonable level of general business knowledge, looking to buy a business for the first time; and that you are looking for a business that is more than simply a lifestyle, one of a size to have a number of employees.

It is of course true that whatever the size and complexity of the deal, from the sub post office to the PLC subsidiary, these will all still have many issues in common, from finding the right business to buy to negotiating the right terms, from understanding the staffing issues to raising the cash.

Where significantly smaller or larger deals will have different characteristics I have therefore simply indicated these in the text, while I have also tried to flag up issues such as post-acquisition integration that are more applicable to an existing business making an acquisition than an individual purchaser.

Additionally, at various points within the book the need for specialist expert advisers is stressed, from corporate finance accountants and lawyers, through to asset finance brokers, independent financial advisers and surveyors. I am always pleased to help as far as possible any readers who are in need of such professionals with an introduction to capable advisers in their area, so please feel free to contact me on the email below for this or with any queries about any aspect of this book.

Good luck.

Mark Blayney

(mark@theoss.freeserve.co.uk)

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