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Ney Grant

Author Profile

Ney Grant

Biography

Ney is a merger and acquisition advisor, entrepreneur, and executive who has been involved with buying and selling companies for almost 20 years offers advice to help you plan for the sale or purchase of your business. He writes the Buying and Selling a Business blog.

ARTICLES BY Ney Grant

Book Recomdentations on Selling Your Business

I was asked the other day for a good book on selling your business. Like many aspects of selling businesses, the recommendation really depends on the size of the business. Here are a few books for selling medium sized and small businesses.

Indemnity Caps: The Purchase Agreement, Part 5

As I explained in the last post, indemnity is one of the most contentious issues in a purchase agreement. A buyer doesn’t want to inherent ANY pre-close risk while a seller at some point in the future wants to relax and know someone isn’t going to the knock on the door and ask for all the money back (or even more). A compromise invariably gets worked out, and it involves indemnity caps and baskets.

Indemnification: The Purchase Agreement, Part 4

Earlier in the purchase agreement, and an earlier blog post, I described how a business owner makes representations and warranties to the buyer. The indemnity section describes what happens when the buyer later finds out some of those reps and warranties were not true.

Covenants and Conditions to Closing: Purchase Agreement Part 3

Covenants within the purchase agreement are promises, or agreements between the buyer and seller. Conditions to Closing typically provide an escape hatch for a buyer to legally walk away from the deal at the last minute if certain conditions are not meet.

Reps and Warranties: Purchase Agreement Part 2

Representations and Warranties are a critical part of a business purchase agreement. This is a summary of these statements of fact that are inserted into the agreement, as well as “qualifiers” that can strengthen or water down the agreement.

The Purchase Agreement Used to Acquire a Business: Part I

Deal Algebra: Pre and Post-Money Valuation with an Equity Twist

If someone buys 25% of your business for $2 million, it is easy to determine the value. If someone invests $10 million in your business for 50% it is a little bit tougher. How do you determine value if someone says, “I’ll pay you $ 2 million and I’ll invest another $10 million in the company and then we’ll both own 50%”?

The Upfront Fee for M&A firms & Business Brokers: Is it Required?

The Upfront Fee for M&A firms & Business Brokers: Is it Required?

Paying an upfront fee really depends on the size of the company – business brokers handling a small company don’t charge an upfront fee while M&A firms representing large ones do. However there is a fairly large fuzzy area in between – and here is a guide on how to figure it out.

M&A Match-Making Websites

In the last post I covered business-for-sale websites, which are fairly simple listings of businesses for sale, typically smaller businesses. For larger deals there are a few websites that go beyond a listing service, and they provide more powerful tools for sorting and searching to find the right buyer and the right seller.

Ranking the Business-For-Sale Websites

Building a website that puts business buyers and sellers together, then charging a subscription fee for the service must be fairly easy to do. Why else would there be over twenty sites doing it, with more appearing each year? The fact is, it isn’t necessary for buyers and sellers to hit all the sites. Here is why.