As the UK’s second city and the commercial heart of the Midlands, Birmingham has a broad base of established accountancy practices serving everything from manufacturing to professional services. Practice owners across the West Midlands who are weighing retirement or succession face the same question — who takes over, and how do you protect the clients and staff you have built up over the years? We buy Birmingham and Midlands practices directly, so you deal with the person who will actually run the firm.
Why sell your practice directly
We’re a direct buyer, not a broker. You deal with the decision-maker, keep the process confidential, avoid broker commission, and shape the deal around your timeline rather than a broker’s calendar. There is no listing your practice around the market and no parade of tyre-kickers — just a grown-up, private conversation. The full comparison is in our guide to broker vs direct.
Who takes over — your managers, or a buyer?
For most Midlands owners the first question is not what the practice is worth, it is who ends up running it. There are broadly three answers: an internal buyout by your own managers, a merger or trade sale to another local firm, or a sale to a buyer who will operate it. They have very different consequences for certainty, confidentiality and how quickly you can actually stop working. Our guides on management buyout vs external sale and succession planning go through each route in full.
| Question | Internal buyout | Sale to Practice Group |
|---|---|---|
| Who funds it | Usually your managers, often out of the firm’s future profits | We do — you are not financing your own exit |
| Certainty | Depends on your team’s appetite and their ability to borrow | Terms are agreed before anything is announced |
| Confidentiality | Your team has to know early in the process | Nobody needs to know until a plan is agreed |
| Clean break | Rarely — usually staged over several years | Clean break or phased step-down, your choice |
What happens to my team?
In most deals, keeping the team is exactly how the clients are kept, so continuity is in everyone’s interest rather than being a concession. What that looks like in practice is agreed in heads of terms, not left vague: who stays, what changes, and what is said to staff and clients, in what order.
Where in the West Midlands do you buy?
Birmingham, Solihull, Coventry, Wolverhampton, Walsall, Dudley, Sandwell and Sutton Coldfield, and out into Warwickshire, Worcestershire, Staffordshire and Shropshire.
UK practices are usually valued on a multiple of gross recurring fees rather than profit, because owner-managed profit is distorted by how the owner pays themselves. Our valuation guide puts the range for general practice at broadly 0.8× to 1.2× GRF, with weaker firms below that and high-quality fee blocks attracting 1.3× or more.
Our promise as a buyer
- Respect the legacy you have built
- Protect the team — keep clients stable through the change
- Improve systems without wrecking the culture
- Confidential from the very first conversation
If you are working out who takes the firm on next, a first conversation about selling your Birmingham practice is confidential and commits you to nothing.
Ready for a confidential conversation?
Wherever your practice is, you deal directly with the buyer — confidentially, and on your timeline.
Book a confidential call