Vendor Story February

We were first contacted by the younger vendor in June of 2024, on the back of a seller registration form being completed on the Draper Hinks website.  A phone appointment was booked with Nicola Draper to see if/ how we could help.

The practice used to be a three partner firm.  It was run by a husband and wife and an older partner.  One of the partners had died a year prior to the practice being put on the market.  This left a widow and an older partner to manage the clients and the staff.  The older partner wanted to retire and left the younger partner to deal with the sale of the practice.  It was at this point that Draper Hinks was contacted.

The working relationship between the remaining two partners was very good but the majority of the workload fell on the shoulders of the younger partner.  She was still dealing with the grief of losing her husband, the resultant extra workload that needed to be managed and the news that the older partner wanted to retire.  So, she was under tremendous pressure.

After speaking with Nicola, it was decided that the practice should go on the market as soon as possible.  The necessary paperwork was sent to the younger vendor for completion.  From that point onwards she was the person that Draper Hinks dealt with.

It was important to get the deal done in a timely manner.  The younger vendor did not want to sell and leave.  She had made all sorts of wonderful plans with her husband for what they were going to do when they retired, but unfortunately that did not happen due to a sudden and fatal illness.  So, as a consequence, she decided to stay on with the buyer post sale, working on a time-diminishing capacity.  This would allow her the space to work out how to deal with retirement by herself.

The mailer was sent out to potential buyers and meetings were held.  The vendors received three firm offers and one offer was accepted.  The chosen buyer was invited to come to the office to carry out the due diligence, which was done over a series of meetings in the evenings when the staff had gone home.

The buyer was part of a larger firm and decisions took a bit longer than expected.  Every step of the process had to be cleared by a governing committee, so it was very important that the process was monitored on a regular basis by us.

Then we had the added complication, and subsequent delay, that the purchaser’s wife didn’t want him to be involved in the buying of these fees because she wanted him to retire!  But he wanted to oversee the purchase and then be the one bedding in the clients.  You can imagine the stress this caused both the buyer and the sellers.  It is never a wise thing to go against your wife, in any circumstance.  But we were lucky in that he managed to persuade her to let him carry on with the purchase and the contract was signed.  I have to say this was a bit touch and go for a while…..

Eventually the deal did complete, the older vendor retired straight away after a minimal hand over and the younger vendor was left to work towards a full retirement after two years.  All parties were happy despite it taking longer than was hoped for.