Strengthening Buy-Sell Agreements from a Business & Valuation Perspective

Chris Mercer will be a featured speaker at the upcoming Southern Regional Meeting of the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel (ACTEC) on Saturday, April 17th in Knoxville, Tennessee. Mercer will speak on the subject of buy-sell agreements, sharing the [...]

On Friday, March 19, 2010, Chris Mercer was featured as a guest on the radio show “Business for Breakfast,” hosted by Tom Chenault on the Radio Colorado Network. During a 10-minute interview, Tom and Chris discussed various aspects of buy-sell agreements, including the hidden “time-bombs” that can be present in buy-sell agreements, the pitfalls of [...]

Rights of first refusal are not the same as buy-sell agreements. They may seem to operate like a buy-sell agreement, in that they provide procedures related to possible future stock transactions. But ROFRs do not assure that transactions will occur.

While traveling from Boston to Memphis yesterday I met a gentleman who was the “vice president, strategic solutions” for a sizable business.  His company had been a $60 million services firm that had just recently been acquired by another services firm that was backed by private equity.  The market value combined entity was perhaps $200 [...]

The best way to prevent this impasse with your company is to address, right now, potential problems caused by a buy/sell agreement drafted years ago for a transfer event that is not the event most likely to occur.

Not Specific to Industry or Corporate Form

Many business owners think that their industry is different than all other industries in its unique problems and issues. They also tend to think that within their industry, their company is also unique. They are at least partially right.
Buy-sell agreements, however, are used in every industry where different [...]

More than a decade ago, three friends got together to start a company. They invested money and time into the start-up and got it going. Early on, they had a buy-sell agreement prepared.
Fast forward to late 2006. My friend was called in to discuss the prospects for selling the company. As part of his engagement, [...]

Virtually every company with two or more shareholders has, or should have, a buy-sell agreement. A quick google search of the term “buy-sell agreement” found the following hits. Listed below are articles that discuss business continuity and one cpirt case in which a buy-sell agreement was a point of contention.