Selling of a Company Name?

[Joseph Watson]

Hello All,

I have a question.

I have a Company which no longer trades or has any assets. I bought this company a few years ago because of it's good trading history and was already Vat registered and had bank accounts. Established trading Companies prefer dealing with older companies than newer ones.

I now would like to sell it. Can anyone give me advise of how and to whom would be interested in purchasing it?

Waiting your replies.

 

[akirk]

sell it as a company
with no assets and not trading, it is worth x no of years x profit = £0
so add a bit for the goodwill of the name and there is your price

there are websites devoted to selling companies

alternatively - work out who might be interested in the name and approach them.

Alasdair

 

[mckellar]

i bought a company last year which had records of previous work and had running contracts still in place.

i paid a third of the "yearly return" so for example (this is not my sums just to give you an idea:

business was turning over £12,000 pa
my business paid £3,000 for the rights to the contracts and goodwill of the company

i might have been lucky, but the business was bought with only contracts - no assets such as van or tools were included, i had to source them myself

 

[LicensedToTrade]

Hello All,

I have a question.

I have a Company which no longer trades or has any assets. I bought this company a few years ago because of it's good trading history

No trade, no assets, good trading history.

Spot the odd one out.

 

[mckellar]

No trade, no assets, good trading history.

Spot the odd one out.

i think you may be jumping to conclusions there, there could be a perfectly good explanation, although if you have a good trading history most folk would sell everything as a "package"

they could have retired, moved into another field etc

 

[jim_price]

In most cases the hassle saved by buying a business with bank account and VAT registration already there, will be easily outweighed by the worry over potential skeletons in the cupboard. I guess a company name that is well established in a particular sector might prove to be an exception to the rule.

 

[ThePublisher]

i bought a company last year which had records of previous work and had running contracts still in place.

i paid a third of the "yearly return" so for example (this is not my sums just to give you an idea:

business was turning over £12,000 pa
my business paid £3,000 for the rights to the contracts and goodwill of the company

i might have been lucky, but the business was bought with only contracts - no assets such as van or tools were included, i had to source them myself

Ehhh? A third of £12K is £4K

 

[LicensedToTrade]

Ehhh? A third of £12K is £4K

Actually according to his sums if a third of his yearly return was 3k then the total return was 9k. He only said that the turnover was 12k.

That aside, not many businesses would get turnover/profit ratio of 4/3