How to sell a business well. A (re)sell conference on selling companies.

Last Thursday we managed to do something extraordinary. ✨ At our conference, we provided business owners with know-how from owners of “exited” companies, transaction advisors, M&A valuation specialists, tax and legal advisors as well as venture capital and private equity investors. In terms of numbers, we have packed decades of experience in selling and investing in Slovak companies and hundreds of completed transactions into one day. The conference was attended by more than 220 participants and was sold out to the last seat.

If I had to pick out the key points from my point of view that were made at the conference, it would be the following:

🔹The best way to sell a company is not to sell it(Michal Truban)
🔹 Owning and selling a company through a holding company (and not as an individual) has a number of tax and non-tax advantages(Tomáš Demo)
🔹 Selling a company through a holding company existing for a month in a country with 0% taxation is not prohibited by law, but it may be an abuse of the law(Peter Varga)
🔹 Don’t sell a company to the first buyer. You will get more for it if you have multiple offers on the table.(Miroslav Talian, FCCA)
🔹 The value of a firm is reduced not only by being limited to the local market, but also by messy accounting and contracts(Karol Balco, FCCA, MRICS)
🔹 The demand from firms for private equity is high. However, supply is limited by the lack of legal and tax infrastructure for efficient capital flow to companies(Daniel Gaspar)
🔹At the stage when the company does not yet have revenues, the founders are the greatest value for the investor(Tatiana Ondrejkova, Michal Nespor, Vojta Rocek)
🔹Balancing the managerial freedom of the owners with the investor’s majority stake balances the investor-owner relationship well(Michal Rybovic)
🔹A transaction can be complicated by an inexperienced advisor (lawyer) who tries to artificially create demand for the company through his overwork(Boris Kostik)
🔹We went into negotiations with the investor with an advisor. He prepared us for the negotiations, helped us set expectations and prepare for the sale so that we didn’t start far apart with the investor(Marek Greško and Robert Dusik)

🔎 Just like when we speak at a conference, we don’t want to skim the surface in our transactional consulting. Legal transactional advice needs to go hand in hand with tax advice. 🤝 Without it, it is half-hearted and does not give the owner a sufficient picture to make a decision on how best to sell the business. Whether this relates to “optimizing “the ownership structure prior to sale, cleaning up the business and bringing out assets that are not to be part of the transaction (carve-out), or suggesting tax optimization options for the earn-out payment.

Our goal is to be the first choice for owners and investors looking for first-class tax and legal transaction advice. And this conference was one step towards that goal. 🚀