Simon Read runs your sale, from first call to handover.
Simon Read runs the sale of your fire safety business himself, from the first conversation to completion and the handover after it.
Part of the Reads Pre-Sale Programme. Led by Simon Read, Founder & Managing Director.
Why one person running the sale matters.
A fire safety sale turns on detail: the renewal terms in the maintenance contracts, the scope of each BAFE registration, how TUPE applies to your engineers. A buyer's questions keep coming until completion, and they are best answered by someone who has held the whole picture from the start.
Simon works closely with each owner rather than taking a volume approach. He brings together independent buyers, acquisitive trade companies, private equity-backed groups and strategic investors, so your business can be put in front of more than one kind of buyer.
What Simon does, stage by stage.
A confidential first conversation
Your reasons, your timing and what matters most to you: the price, the team, the legacy or simply certainty. Nothing is decided until you are ready.
A valuation and a plan
A realistic range for your business, the factors behind it, and which buyers are most likely to pay for what you have built.
Quiet approaches to buyers
Anonymised approaches, with information released in stages and only under NDA, so your staff, clients and competitors do not find out.
Offers and heads of terms
Negotiating price, structure and terms, including how much is paid on completion and how much is deferred or tied to an earn-out.
Due diligence to completion
Keeping due diligence moving: the contract register, certification records, accounts and staff information a buyer's advisers ask for, working alongside your solicitor and accountant.
Handover and after
A handover period agreed in advance, and a close eye on any deferred consideration until it has been paid.
Who runs it.
Simon Read, Founder & Managing Director
Simon Read founded Reads M&A Advisory and has many years of experience in business sales. He runs every sale personally, while the rest of the team prepare the figures and keep the paperwork moving.
What comes before the sale.
Much of what a buyer pays for is built before a sale starts. If you are a few years away, the rest of the programme covers that ground.
Start with a confidential valuation.
It commits you to nothing. It tells you what your options look like.