Guide
Your people and clients
The part of a sale that is not negotiated with professionals, and the part sellers most often say they would handle differently.
The commercial side of a sale is negotiated with people who do this for a living. The human side is handled with people who trust you, and it is where most sellers say afterwards that they would do things differently. Two groups are involved and they need opposite handling. Staff need to hear it from you before they hear it anywhere else. Clients need to hear it once it is certain, in a way that answers the only question they genuinely have, which is who looks after me now.
Sequencing is the whole skill. Tell people too early and you are asking them to hold a secret through months of uncertainty, with the risk that an adviser leaves and takes the value with them. Tell them too late and it lands as something done to them rather than something explained. Most sales work through a narrow circle bound by confidentiality during negotiation, then a conversation with the wider team at the point the deal is genuinely certain, then client communication on an agreed timetable once contracts are signed.
Client communication is not a marketing exercise. It is a regulated act with data protection attached, and the shape of the deal decides what is possible. Clients whose data is being transferred have rights about that transfer, some structures need consent rather than notification, and the letter that goes out is usually agreed with the buyer, because it is the first thing the buyer's relationship with your clients gets built on. The version that works is short, signed by you, honest about why, and clear about what changes and what does not.
Your employees have their own protection. In an asset sale, employees attached to the part of the business being transferred may move across under TUPE, which carries information and consultation obligations that have to be met before completion rather than remembered afterwards. In a share sale nothing changes at law, because the employer is the same company under new ownership, though the change in culture is felt just as keenly.
Finally, expect to be asked to sign restrictive covenants. A buyer paying for client relationships wants assurance you are not going to advise those clients again, or recruit the people who did. Duration and reach are negotiable and have to be reasonable to be enforceable, but they will shape what you are permitted to do next. The articles below take each of these in turn.
Articles in this guide
5 guides in this subject40 minutes of reading
- Telling clients about an IFA saleWhen clients must be told about a sale, what consent and data protection require, how novation works, and why telling them too early is the costliest mistake.
- How clients actually transferFollow the practical steps in transferring an IFA client bank, from client consent and new agreements to provider changes, data checks and ongoing charges.
- Clients who will not moveSee why some clients decline a transfer when an IFA practice is sold, how this can affect deferred payments and what sellers can agree before completion.
- Keeping your advisers through a saleConsider how to retain advisers during an IFA sale, address uncertainty about roles and pay, and protect the client relationships that support the deal.
- Telling your staff you are sellingWhen to tell key advisers, when to tell everyone else, how TUPE works in an asset sale, and what a leak or a bungled announcement actually costs.