A private conversation, owner to owner
Selling your business
I buy and run British businesses. I keep them British businesses.
An owner, not a broker. When you write, it's me writing. When you call, it's me who answers. No call centre, no junior team, no finder working a list.
An owner, not a broker
Four businesses I own. Three I run myself, every week.
I know what it takes to keep machines running, customers happy and wages paid, because I do it. These are mine.
Surface Science
Industrial surface coatings and non-stick (PTFE) treatments.
HuntingdonWhat I do
I buy established businesses from owners who are ready to step back. Sometimes that's retirement. Sometimes it's health, or family, or simply enough years at the wheel. I also back owners who want a partner rather than an exit.
I'm interested in solid, unglamorous companies that customers rely on. The kind of business that took thirty years to build and doesn't deserve to vanish because there was no one to hand it to.
What happens to your people
I buy businesses to run them, not to strip them.
It's the question that matters most to every owner I meet. Here's my honest answer, the good and the hard.
I won't tell you it always goes to plan. I ran one business for nearly four years; when it could no longer carry on it went into liquidation, and I bought its assets and goodwill into a new company so the team could keep going. Not one person was made redundant, and the business is trading well today.
Another I took on already in deep distress, and I couldn't save it. I grew its sales hard, but the costs it carried were beyond anything it could ever earn, and it closed. People lost their jobs. I still think about them, and I learned more from that than from anything that has gone right.
So I won't promise you the future. What I can promise is how I'll behave: I buy to run a business on, not break it up; the people who built it come first; and I'll be straight with you from the first call about what's realistic and what isn't.
The part that keeps owners up at night is the part I get right.
Call me and I'll tell you, plainly, how I'd look after what you built.
How it works
- A conversation, in confidence.
No charge, no obligation. Nobody else hears about it: not your staff, not your competitors, not the market.
- An honest view of what your business is worth.
I'll tell you how a buyer like me sees it, and what would make it worth more, whether or not you sell to me.
- A straight yes or no, quickly.
I won't waste a year of your life. If it's not right for me, I'll say so and, where I can, point you somewhere useful.
- Straight dealing to the finish.
Once we agree something, I stand by it. No last-minute games, no moving the goalposts.
If the timing isn't right, the conversation still costs you nothing, and you'll know more about your options than you did before.
Own a business and thinking about what's next?
A conversation in confidence, with the man who answers his own phone. No charge, no obligation, no broker.