Legalities

Legal issues unrelated to advice

Looking beyond FAA and FSLAA, there are wider compliance issues arising from compliance with wider legal requirements.

  • They include, but are not limited to:

  • Contracts between advisers and supplier companies

  • The Fair Trading Act

  • Consumer Guarantees Act

  • Privacy Act (under review)

We maintain a full schedule of the reference standards that an advice business must meet.

Agreement issues

The agreement for sale and purchase is a much-neglected document. One of the most aggressive acquirers of business uses a relatively informal document that our legal advisers consider to be wholly inadequate.

We suspect that they feel that possession in the greater part of the whole transaction, but disputes can happen, and the larger the transaction the more important it is to have an agreement that is clear on the responsibilities of both parties, covering, at a minimum, the following issues:

  • Property clients, brands, documents, company, bank accounts

  • Consideration and settlement, dates and conditions

  • Brand, customer data, and privacy

  • Complaints and compliance

  • GST, entitlements, claw backs, payments, interest and disputes

  • Duties, transfer, confidentiality, work, non-compete

  • Warranties, complaints, litigation, guarantees

We have two standard forms of agreement which are appropriate for small and larger transactions. A secondary vendor-finance agreement is available to handle any part of the purchase price which is to be paid more than one year later. Treating that separately is important for accounting and tax purposes.

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Copyright and Legal

What we do

We advise on client base sales. When a whole business is to be sold, in accordance with the law we engage a properly licensed agent. We use external legal and accounting advice for matters such as the transaction agreement and tax issues.

If you are looking for financial advice we recommend you seek an appropriately Registered or Authorised Financial Adviser or a suitable member of a Qualifying Financial Entity.

Client Confidentiality

Confidentiality is paramount. All client work is held confidential. Unless otherwise instructed, we will only ever disclose the client name and contact details of the person who has engaged us. From time to time it is necessary to disclose aspects of the assignment to suppliers and others who may be involved in the project. This is expected but is kept to a minimum and all suppliers are also instructed to hold client information as confidential.

We have a confidentiality document agreement available for signature if you wish.

Important note

While we often highlight legal or financial issues for clients we always request that you seek your own independent legal advice. Our domain is to consider the business implications, usually in the areas of marketing, strategy, and product design.

Both the content of this site and any reporting or data that we supply in the course of consulting is not warranted to be complete or without error. You are responsible for the actions that you take and cannot claim that we are liable or partly for decisions that you make in which you have, either in whole or part, used our information.