Succession and owner exit
A successor needs an operating plan, and a retiring owner needs a clear account of what they would still be expected to do. These guides examine those questions before essential equipment is released or an uncertain proposal is treated as a settled outcome.
They prepare decisions for the owner and appropriate advisers. UK Auction Group is the destination for the equipment disposal workstream; these pages do not describe a service selling whole companies.
Test the proposed operation
- Ask a possible successor how the business would operate
- Map the possible routes out of your business
- Does the successor need your existing premises?
- Which equipment does a successor genuinely need?
- Set a realistic limit on your owner handover
People, discussions and dependencies
- When family interest has not become a succession plan
- Questions when an employee wants to take over
- Keep owner-exit planning moving during buyer discussions
- Agree a fallback decision date for succession talks
- How much of the customer relationship depends on you?
- When a successor still needs your technical judgement
Different operations and competing proposals
- Keeping the property when someone else takes over trading
- Keeping selected customers after leaving the main business
- When the successor wants a different business
- When two possible successors want different things
- What a failed succession trial tells you
- When the succession proposal has an unresolved funding gap
- Before an early asset sale closes a succession option
Owner roles, evidence and a change of direction
- Can your managers operate without an owner on site?
- Discover missing knowledge before committing to succession
- Define the role you are willing to keep after an exit
- Compare succession and closure on the same basis
- Who needs to know about a possible successor?
- When someone wants only one part of the business
- What evidence supports a decision to stop seeking a successor?
- Move from succession discussions to a closure plan
Discuss the authorised surplus or retirement asset scope with UK Auction Group.
Return to all closure topics.