When you are selling your business, you are often selling ideas, business processes and intellectual property that you have built up over some years.

This is even more so if you have started the business from scratch yourself. However, when a purchaser is looking at buying a business they always want to find out as much about what the financial positon of it is, how it is run and details of the important “know how” to make the business a success.Therefore, you will be giving a lot of valuable information to a purchaser to review during their due diligence period.

Also, in some instances, you may not want the general public to know that you may be selling the business because it could have an adverse impact on you if the purchaser doesn’t end up buying. To this end, including a particular confidentiality clause in your agreement, or preferably having a confidentiality agreement drawn up even before an agreement is talked about with a purchaser, can be a very good protection mechanism for you if the business doesn’t end up selling.

Prudentia Law can assist with putting in place these types of agreements so that you, at least, have some protection going into the negotiation stage of a sale.

However, make sure you attend to this prior to even thinking of talking to potential buyers about selling.