The Contracts That Quietly Die the Day You Complete.
Most buyers remember to ask for the accounts. Far fewer ask for the paperwork that tells you whether the business will still be intact the morning after you own it.
That gap is where a surprising number of deals quietly go wrong.
Management agreements that don't automatically transfer.
Some landlord agreements are written to survive a change of ownership. Others aren't, and simply lapse, or become renegotiable, the moment the business changes hands. You want to know which is which before you sign, not after your first landlord newsletter goes out under a new name.
Employment contracts for the people who actually run things.
Who's tied in with a proper notice period, and who could hand in their notice the same week you complete? Key-person risk isn't just about the owner. It's about whoever holds the relationships, the local knowledge and the landlord trust that doesn't show up on an org chart.
Licences, compliance and the software everything runs on.
Client Money Protection scheme membership, redress scheme registration, and the CRM or property management software the whole operation depends on. Check whether these transfer with the business or need re-registering from scratch, because "we'll sort it after completion" is a more expensive sentence than it sounds.
The lease, properly read.
If premises are involved, get the real terms and the actual remaining length, not the one-paragraph summary in the sale particulars.
Why this matters more than the number on the front page.
A business's value isn't only in its profit. It's in whether that profit is protected and transferable. A seller who can produce all of this cleanly and quickly is usually telling you something important about how the whole business is run, and a seller who can't is telling you something too.
Ask for these documents early.
It tells you a great deal, including how organised the business actually is behind the numbers.
That's what we do at Russou.
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