Advisers and authority to sell

A closure may involve several advisers, several legal entities and several people who describe themselves as the owner. Start by identifying the question and the evidence behind it. Then establish the appropriate advice and formal decision route before turning the plan into an instruction.

These pages provide briefing records and questions. They do not determine solvency, interpret an agreement, establish sale authority or supply legal or tax approval. Keep the specific professional answers attached to the facts they assessed.

Choose the question and identify the business

• What your accountant needs to know about the closure plan
• Prepare the first solicitor briefing for a business closure
• When financial uncertainty changes the closure conversation
• What to ask an auctioneer during a wider business closure
• Map who can decide what during a closure
• Identify the legal business behind each closure task
• Questions to take to advisers when a sole trader stops
• Closing the trade and closing the company need separate decisions
• Prepare for advice about winding down a partnership

Roles, representatives and ownership

• Record a director instruction clearly during closure
• When an owner is a shareholder but does not run the company
• Keep company assets separate from the owner's belongings
• When the person expected to approve closure decisions is unavailable
• Questions about using a power of attorney for business matters
• What an executor needs to ask about business assets

Agreements and proposed asset arrangements

• Ask the right questions about financed assets during closure
• Put leased equipment on the closure advice agenda
• When someone connected to the business wants to buy its assets
• Keeping business assets personally: questions for your advisers

Coordinate advice and record instructions

• Give different closure advisers a consistent set of facts
• What to do when closure advice appears to conflict
• Agree what each closure adviser is being asked to do
• Keep the assumptions behind professional closure advice
• Check sale authority before assets are marketed
• When authority changes halfway through the closure
• Build a review pack before approving the disposal plan

UK Auction Group can discuss the equipment-disposal workstream. Give the auctioneer the current asset scope, established instruction route and any question that remains unresolved.

Return to all closure topics.