Choosing the right advisory team for your business sale

A successful business sale depends on more than finding the right buyer — it depends on assembling the right team to get you there. For most business owners, this means engaging an M&A advisor, a lawyer and an accountant, each playing a distinct role.

The M&A advisor leads the sale process end-to-end: preparing marketing materials, identifying and approaching potential buyers, managing a competitive process, and negotiating commercial terms through to completion. A specialist sell-side advisor also brings an independent view of value and a buyer network that most owners don’t have on hand.

The lawyer drafts and negotiates the transaction documentation — principally the Sale and Purchase Agreement — covering warranties, indemnities, disclosure and completion mechanics. Engaging a lawyer with genuine M&A transaction experience, rather than a generalist commercial lawyer, materially reduces risk at this stage.

The accountant supports financial due diligence, helping to normalise historical earnings and providing financial and tax information as required. In most cases, this is a business owner’s existing accountant — though some engagements may also require advice from a specialist M&A tax advisor, given the complexity involved.

Coordinating this team is itself a job. As lead advisor, Southgate works closely with a business owner’s legal, accounting and tax team throughout the process — and where an owner doesn’t yet have the right team in place, our network helps clients assemble one suited to their transaction.

As an independent advisor with no in-house legal, accounting or tax offering, Southgate has no pressure to cross-sell — our recommendations are based solely on finding the best-fit team for each transaction.