We are in the 11th hour of purchasing a small business. Throughout the due diligence process the seller has been hyper-paranoid about his employees (whom are in their 60s and 70s) catching wind of the sale, so we have had to access the property only after business hours. Even after the Purchase Agreement has been signed he is STILL very squirrely about his employees finding out. (1) is this normal? (2) any obvious red flags?
Note: seller is hands-off and remote. Employees operate the day-to-day.
This is very normal. The employees should not know that the business ownership has changed hands until after the transaction. The caveat here is if there is a key employee that you absolutely need in order to continue operating the business. This would be someone like a long-term general manager that knows all of the clients, employees and could really hurt the business if they were to leave.