Planning for retirement can (and ideally should) start many years before you want to retire. If you plan anywhere between 5 and 15 years ahead, you could transition the ownership of your business to more junior colleagues in a phased way over time. You get to stay part of the business for the time period which suits you, and you can train and mentor colleagues as they purchase bite size chunks of the business over time. This model is entirely flexible and you can transfer any portion of the business, over any time frame, to as many or as few successors as you wish. The transaction can be funded by the incoming owners with any combination of personal funds, personal borrowing, borrowing against the value of the business or “deferred consideration” where you fund the transaction and receive your payment out of future profits.

Have you ever considered a John Lewis style ownership structure for your business? A model where everyone in your team can share in the rewards of the business? There’s plenty of confusion out there about what it means to be employee owned. How do employees afford to buy the business? Who makes the decisions in the business? What happens when employees leave? These are all important questions, and one’s which we can answer for you in a conversation about your succession planning needs. By selling all, or part, of your business to your employees in one go or over time, you can achieve your retirement objectives in a particularly tax efficient way. Plus, becoming employee owned tends to have significant advantages when it comes to staff motivation and retention.

There are so many flexible options when it comes to planning for the future of your business. The route you take will be determined by many factors, including the date you want to retire, the value of your business, the number of potential future owners you have within the business, and your personal financial circumstances. You can transition any portion of your business over any time-frame, and your future owners can fund the transaction in a variety of ways all at the same time. You can combine employee ownership with a traditional ownership structure to give your whole team a stake in the business, but with key team members acquiring an additional share. The challenge isn’t in identifying the options, it’s in finding the one which if right for you and your business. We can deliver your route to retirement whatever your aspirations.