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 absolutely normal. The logic here is that if the staff finds out, they might try to leave and it also increases the rumor mill between employees. They don’t need to know until its done.
Even when I bought a business, I sat *every* single employee down and told them we wanted to keep then.
I’ve done this too. And sometimes they employees are glad to see a change of ownership - many business owners get burned out, lose enthusiasm, etc. A new owner with a fresh take on things can breath new life into an otherwise slowly sinking enterprise.