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If not, my next question would be: what kind of process do you need to go through to sell a company in Germany? :)

jFriedensreich 3y ago
afaik there is no formalized process to sell for winding down a company in germany as in sweden, though some attorneys offer a service to connect with some clients that want to start a company and try to do a swap, which is legally a grey area. I did that also once but it was a nightmare in a differnt way and took not much less time and energy. I am sure you can be lucky there if the timing is right and the people taking over are not complete idiots but it took still 1.6 years until everything was completely over. Only (maybe) worth it if the people taking over are totally vetted and the company they want to run is similar enough to the old one so the trigger for "wirtschaftlichen Neugründung" does not take action, otherwise they have to basically do the same as founding a company from scratch and it makes no sense financially.
- fl7305 3y ago
  In Sweden you can sell your company either to used as a "shelf company", meaning the buyer will later resell it, or you can sell it with the promise that it will be dissolved/liquidated and not resold. It seems much more popular to sell it to be dissolved since there are some risks involved with someone else using it in the future. So I can understand if it is not very popular in Germany either to sell a company to be re-used. What surprises me is that it seems to be a good sized market in Germany for someone to provide a service where they buy your company and later dissolve it, but the service doesn't exist (?) The formal process in Germany seems simple enough. Just sign a sales contract at a public notary, the buyer replaces the CEO, and you're done. Since this doesn't really seem to exist (?), I assume the potential liabilities for the buyer are so great that the service price would be much too high?
ccozan 3y ago
A notary, and a contract.

afaik there is no formalized process to sell for winding down a company in germany as in sweden, though some attorneys offer a service to connect with some clients that want to start a company and try to do a swap, which is legally a grey area. I did that also once but it was a nightmare in a differnt way and took not much less time and energy. I am sure you can be lucky there if the timing is right and the people taking over are not complete idiots but it took still 1.6 years until everything was completely over. Only (maybe) worth it if the people taking over are totally vetted and the company they want to run is similar enough to the old one so the trigger for "wirtschaftlichen Neugründung" does not take action, otherwise they have to basically do the same as founding a company from scratch and it makes no sense financially.

fl7305 3y ago
In Sweden you can sell your company either to used as a "shelf company", meaning the buyer will later resell it, or you can sell it with the promise that it will be dissolved/liquidated and not resold. It seems much more popular to sell it to be dissolved since there are some risks involved with someone else using it in the future. So I can understand if it is not very popular in Germany either to sell a company to be re-used. What surprises me is that it seems to be a good sized market in Germany for someone to provide a service where they buy your company and later dissolve it, but the service doesn't exist (?) The formal process in Germany seems simple enough. Just sign a sales contract at a public notary, the buyer replaces the CEO, and you're done. Since this doesn't really seem to exist (?), I assume the potential liabilities for the buyer are so great that the service price would be much too high?

ccozan 3y ago

A notary, and a contract.