How Vendor Finance Works

No jargon. Here's what it actually means to sell your business this way.

The Problem This Solves

Most buyers of a small or medium-sized business don't have the full purchase price sitting in a bank account, and getting a bank loan approved to buy a business is slow, and often turned down outright — for the buyer as much as for you. That leaves a lot of good, genuine businesses sitting unsold with no real buyer in sight, even when there's someone out there who'd run it well.

Vendor finance is a different way round it. Instead of waiting for a buyer with all the cash upfront, the seller agrees to receive some or all of the price over an agreed period, paid out of what the business itself earns going forward. You still get paid in full. It just doesn't all arrive on day one.

What Happens, Step by Step

  1. 1

    A confidential conversation

    We talk about the business, why you're selling, and roughly what it earns. Nothing is written down or shared with anyone else at this stage.

  2. 2

    We look at the numbers properly

    Turnover, costs, and what's actually left over — not what a business "should" be worth on paper. We tell you plainly if the numbers support a deal or if they don't.

  3. 3

    We agree the structure together

    How much is paid at the point of transfer, how the rest is paid over time, and over what period. This is agreed between us directly, not dictated.

  4. 4

    A proper written agreement

    Drawn up by a Thai lawyer, setting out the payment schedule and how you stay protected until you've been paid in full — this is not something either of us handles on a handshake.

  5. 5

    Handover and payments begin

    We agree a sensible handover period so we understand the business properly, and payments follow the schedule set out in the agreement.

How You're Protected

Being paid over time only works if you're genuinely protected until the final payment lands. That protection is built into the written sale agreement itself — for example, retaining a hold over the shares or control of the company until the agreed payments have been made, rather than simply trusting a payment schedule. Exactly how that's structured depends on the deal and needs to be drawn up properly by a Thai lawyer — there isn't yet a single standard way this is done in Thailand the way there is in the UK, so we're not going to pretend there's an off-the-shelf template. We'd rather be straight about that now than promise something we can't deliver.

Want to Talk It Through?

No fee, no obligation. If a deal doesn't make sense once we've looked at it properly, we'll tell you that plainly too.