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A Comprehensive Guide to Buying a Business in Canada

By Michelle Collins & Julie King

So, you're thinking of buying a business. Congratulations!

Before you start looking - and especially before you get to the point where you are ready to make an offer - there is much to learn. To help you, we have put together a comprehensive guide that explains the process, from finding a business and deciding what type of business is best for you, to determining the value of the business, negotiating with the seller, making sure your legal bases are covered, and closing the deal.

With 20 pages of rich content, we have provided two ways to read our guide. You can either use the Back and Next buttons at the bottom of each page, or you can click on the table of contents link at any time to jump directly to a specific section.


Table of Contents

  1. Introduction & Table of Contents
  1. Finding a business
    1. Franchising vs. the independent business
    2. Understanding yourself: a simple assessment exercise
    3. Businesses for sale: where to look?

  2. Section II: Assessment and Valuation
    1. Introduction, Hard & soft factors
    2. Digging for truth
    3. Formulas for putting a value on a business:
    4. The importance of past performance & reliable financials
  1. Striking a deal
    1. Introduction & What Motivates Buyers
    2. What Motivates Sellers
    3. Tax Considerations: Optimizing the Deal for Tax Purposes
    4. Negotiation Tips

  2. Legal considerations
    1. Introduction & the buy sell agreement
    2. The buyer's perspective
    3. The seller's perspective

  3. Closing the deal
    1. In closing

    Appendix: Further Reading and Resources

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Author Information
Michelle Collins is a CanadaOne™ staff writer.

Julie King is the co-founder and publisher of CanadaOne.com®

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