Commentary: Buy / Sell Agreement Discussion Outline

September 20, 2010 blog post

Webinar – Small Business Planning for Multiple Shareholders – Buy / Sell Agreements

Below you will find a link to a webinar I did in 2009. The topic was buy / sell agreements. You can access an archive of the actual webinar (with audio) by clicking this link:

http://www.oeockent.org/index.php/successionplanning/resources/webinars/90

Scroll down to Fri. May 29, 2009 to access the webinar.

For a copy of the slides without audio click here (12Mb PDF).

For those of you who work with privately held businesses or participate in a multiple ownership arrangement yourself, this presentation may be of interest. Business owners with partners almost always need some type of buy / sell arrangement in place to protect their interests in an enterprise as well as address their responsibilities to one other. In this presentation I make the point that some agreements are more comprehensive than others and that some are simply generic. Generic documents tend to be one size fits all, while customized agreements more adequately address the needs of the owners and the situation. I further argue that even where a buy / sell agreement does exist, there is a good chance that, upon review, it could be improved.

I worked with small and family business owners for over thirty years. The content of this presentation represents the outline I used to organize a conversation with clients about creating or improving a buy / sell arrangement. I had a great deal of success with it. It might be useful to you as the basis of a conversation with your clients or partners too.

Tom Gilbride