Lawyer Monthly - November 2021 Edition

81 WWW.LAWYER-MONTHLY.COM NOV 2021 Can you tell us more about your team’s involvement with the negotiations? The buyers and sellers have known each other for about 40 years and Trevor Hinchcliffe actually worked for the Kershaws’ grandfather at the beginning of his working life. This meant that most matters were negotiated directly and so it was simply a case of documenting their agreement. What expertise did your team bring to the deal? We have worked with the Kershaw family for a number of years and so understand their main priorities. The deal included a completion net asset adjustment to the purchase price, so we needed to work closely with our client’s accountants to ensure that the appropriate accounting policies were included. Did you encounter any challenges during the acquisition? If so, how did you overcome them? Richard Hinchliffe has retained an interest in the company and is still a director, so it was important to ensure that a robust shareholders’ agreement was put in place to regulate the relationship between the buyers and the minority shareholder going forward. How does this deal fit the profile of your law firm? The majority of our corporate transactions are on behalf of owner managers or private limited companies, so this deal completely fits that profile. Do you expect that your firm’s working relationship with the Kershaw brothers will continue? I would certainly hope so. It is very rewarding to support generations of the same family. What other notable deals have you recently worked on? We work on a wide range of deals, many of which are reported in the media. We recently advised the director-shareholders of Consolidated Timber Holdings Group during an acquisition by Rubicon Partners. We are in the process of finalising a sale to an employee ownership trust and we are also just about to complete the sale of a care home and training centre to a management team who have worked with the vendor for years. The vendor is delighted that the business succession has been secured. Lawyer Monthly had the pleasure to speak with Cathy Cook, Partner at LCF Law to give us some further insight into this transaction: