For business owners

Selling the business. Protecting what matters.

You have carried the responsibility for years. Choosing who carries it next deserves time, candour and care.

Where we start

A good outcome has more than one measure.

The agreement has to work for you. The handover has to work for the people, the customers and the business you leave behind.

Asked properly, most owners describe something longer than a number. The people who must be looked after. The customers they do not want to let down. Whether the name stays over the door. How long they stay involved, and what they do on the Monday after they stop. How it is explained to everyone on the day, and by whom.

Those answers shape a transaction more than any model does, and a buyer who has not asked for them is guessing.

  1. Your people

    Employment and terms carry on as they are. Managers who want to go further are backed and rewarded for what they build.

  2. Your reputation

    A name earned over decades is not something a buyer can create. From completion it is ours to look after, and it is worth more to us intact.

  3. Your transition

    Stay for an agreed period or step away at completion. Either works, provided it is decided with you and well before the day.

Stages

Two colleagues in conversation on the stairs of an owner-managed business.

How a transaction with Oren runs.

  • 01

    Talk

    Confidential, informal and with no obligation on either side. Plenty of owners are two or three years from doing anything when they first talk to a buyer. That is a good time to talk.

  • 02

    Understand

    Accounts, customers, people and how the company actually works. Enough for us to form a genuine view, handled quietly, at a pace that does not disturb the business or unsettle your team.

  • 03

    Agree

    A clear indication of value and structure, with the reasoning behind it set out plainly, along with funding and timing. We would rather have a frank conversation about price early than discover a gap after months of work.

  • 04

    Due diligence

    Proportionate and properly resourced, with advisers instructed at the point terms are agreed rather than after. We ask for what we need in order to own the business responsibly and to satisfy the people funding it.

  • 05

    Completion

    Documented, funded and completed to an agreed timetable. Your advisers will deal with people who return calls and take decisions.

  • 06

    Hand over

    How your employees and customers are told, and by whom. Whether you stay for a period or step away at completion. What happens to the name. All of it agreed with you well before the day, not improvised on it.

Questions

The questions owners ask first.

Price and structure matter. They are rarely what an owner asks about first.

  • What happens to my employees?

    Continuity of employment and terms is our starting position. Long-serving people are usually the reason the business is worth buying, and we say so to them directly.

  • Will the company keep what made it successful?

    That is the point of buying it. What works stays, and anything we did want to do differently would be discussed with the people running the business, not decided over their heads.

  • Will customers continue to be looked after?

    Customers usually notice a change of ownership through service. Protecting that is a commercial priority as much as a matter of principle.

  • Will anyone care about the reputation I built?

    From completion it is ours to look after, and it is worth more to us intact than anything we could gain by treating it carelessly.

  • What will the business look like in ten years?

    Larger, we hope, and still recognisably itself. We have no obligation to sell it, so the honest answer is that we expect it still to be ours.

Confidentiality

Nothing leaves the room.

Owners are right to be careful. A rumour reaching staff, customers or competitors at the wrong moment can do real damage to a business that has done nothing wrong.

We will sign a non-disclosure agreement before you share anything sensitive, and we behave as though one is in place from the first call regardless. We do not contact your employees, customers or suppliers without your agreement, and we do not discuss live conversations with anyone outside the small number of people who need to know.

If we decide not to proceed, that is the end of it. We return or delete what you shared, keep only the record described in our Privacy Notice, and the conversation stays private.