Buying and selling businesses is a lively market, except that it largely takes place behind the scenes. In fact, most sellers do not shout from the rooftops that their business is for sale, because in many cases that disclosure leads to uncertainty and unrest among staff, customers and suppliers.
The business takeover market
There is no single figure on the number of SME transfers. Reliable statistics are lacking because most transfers and transactions, due to confidentiality, are not made public. However, years of research by acquisition platform Brookz shows that at any given time in the Netherlands there are between 17,000 and 23,000 businesses for sale by entrepreneurs who want to sell their business for whatever reason.
The number of mergers and acquisitions tracked annually by Statistics Netherlands indicates that not all businesses for sale are actually sold (that same year). Recent years show a picture of some 4,500 to 8,500 businesses changing hands each year.
The sellers
Who are these entrepreneurs putting their businesses up for sale? First of all, over a hundred thousand entrepreneurs from the baby boom generation are approaching retirement age. After decades of diligent work, this group of entrepreneurs is inevitably approaching the finish line.
In addition, a new generation of entrepreneurs has emerged over the past decade. These entrepreneurs see no point in doing the same trick within the same business until retirement. They hope to build their business into a success within five to 10 years, and when the pioneering and building phase is over, they work toward an exit.
For both categories of business owners, the process of a business sale looks much the same, whatever the reason for the transfer. Sell a business is an exciting, intense and often emotional process. Keep in mind that all successful business transfers have one commonality; the selling entrepreneur prepared thoroughly by planning his exit plan.
The buyers
The buyer of a business can be an individual (MBI), an employee (MBO), a strategic buyer, an informal investor or an investment company.
In a management buy-in (MBI), an unknown individual from outside your business takes over. Although a management buy-in was seen by many sellers as something of a last straw until a few years ago, this form of transaction has recently been gaining popularity.
In a management buyout (MBO), the seller transfers the business to one or more employees within the company. This is often the second-in-command, a manager in charge of a division of the company or the current management team (the second echelon).
In a strategic acquisition, the owner sells his business to another company. This may be a direct competitor or an industry foreign business. Or the entrepreneur sells his business to an investment company. An investment company is not likely to run the business itself, which is why these types of deals often go hand-in-hand with an acquisition in the form of a management buy-in/buy-out or the investment company comes up with an MBI itself.
The businesses for sale
Yet the takeover market has a poor match between supply and demand. This is mainly because the market for SMEs is not very transparent. In part, the confidential nature of the transactions causes this opacity, so good and complete information about business transfers is often lacking.
Brookz s mission is to make the SME takeover market more transparent, partly by offering entrepreneurs who want to buy a business a platform with over 50,000 affiliated entrepreneurs, investors and takeover advisors. Over the past seventeen years, more than 8,700 businesses for sale have been successfully sold through Brookz.
