My priorities have changed. (Have yours?)

I’ve never been particularly interested in travel.

But now, after being cooped up for so many months thanks to COVID, I’ve started to feel differently.

We have friends from Perth who were due to visit us last Easter, in order to surprise my wife for a ‘special’ birthday.

Obviously, they had to cancel – so now I’m thinking seriously about visiting them in Australia, when it becomes possible again.

It will inevitably mean taking several weeks off work, which is something I’ve previously avoided.

But the pandemic has changed my priorities.

And I’m not the only one.

I know people who’ve decided to move out of London after all this is done. Others are determined to change jobs or even switch careers entirely.

People are rethinking what’s important to them and how they want to live their lives.

One of the biggest signs of this?

There’s been a recent surge in merger and acquisitions.

I recently spoke to a friend of mine in Corporate Finance who completed 9 transactions before Christmas, which was incredible!

And the official numbers back this up. Deal volumes soared by 76% in the 4th quarter of 2020, compared to Q3. This was high even compared to recent years.

Overall, the M&A levels in 2020 were down just 14.5% compared to 2019.

And I’m certain we’ll be seeing a lot more deals during 2021 and into 2022.

There are many reasons for this, which I’ll go into in a future email…

…but undoubtedly, one is that some company owners are going to decide, after everything we’ve been through, that it’s time to ‘get out’ of their business, do something different and make a big change in their life.

How about you?

Has the pandemic prompted you to think differently about your future…

…And perhaps start considering for how long you want to continue running your company…

…and when might be the right time to wind down – or move onto something else?

If so, you’re not alone.

But here’s the catch.

You can’t sell up the moment you feel the time is right.

Selling a company takes years of planning…

…Because to find the right buyer and get the right price, your company needs to have a spotless financial track record over several years. And it needs all the paperwork, systems and processes to prove it.

Getting even a really good company to that point is a medium- to long-term project.

So make no mistake.

There may have been an uptick in mergers and acquisitions at the end of 2020…

…But each one of these sales really “began” years earlier, when the company owners put together their “exit plan” (or as one client of mine calls it, the “escape plan”), and started implementing it methodically.

I’ll tell you more about what your exit plan should include next week.

But in the meanwhile: Has the pandemic brought forward your timetable for retirement, or made you start thinking about when to sell your company?

Warmly,

Garry

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