Every year roughly a hundred thousand German owners look for a successor, and many sound companies close because none is found. The posts under this tag describe the sale of an owner-run company from the buyer's side of the table: what happens between a first confidential message and the notary appointment, what a purchase price is built from, how the NDA, the indicative offer, and the review fit together, and what makes a handover work after closing. Hamnett Enterprises buys established businesses in the Rhein-Main region to hold them permanently, so the notes here come from our own acquisition work and from the conversations that precede it. Expect concrete timelines, the documents a buyer asks for, and the questions an owner should put to any buyer before sharing detail. Nothing here is tax or legal advice. Where a step needs a Steuerberater or a Notar, the post says so and explains why.
Germany hands over roughly 109,000 companies a year and closes 114,000 more for want of a successor. We read sixteen trades through two filters, revenue bound to the company by contract and owner earnings of EUR 100,000 to 1 million, and show where a shared AI-run office adds EUR 40,000 to 120,000 a year before any revenue moves.
Industry assessmentsSuccessionAI-native operations
What an AI-native owner would change in 16 German trades →We counted the public succession exchange nexxt-change for Hesse ourselves on 25 August 2026: 412 sale offers, 291 buyer listings, 39 listings in Frankfurt am Main alone. Plus the asking prices, the KfW figures scaled down to Hesse, and the free appointments where sellers and buyers meet.
The Frankfurt succession market in numbers (2026) →We buy companies at €300,000 to €1M in Rhein-Main and hold them permanently. Before we talk about price we read four things in a fixed order. That order is the checklist for any owner who wants to sell a small business in Germany, with the numbers on multiples, seller loans, and transaction costs.
Selling a company in Rhein-Main: what a buyer reads first →A first-time buyer with around €400,000 wants three owner-run businesses in Hessen. With a bank the programme needs €450,000, without one €1.29M. We rank eighteen financing routes, show why debt cover depends only on the multiple, and check KfW, Bürgschaftsbank Hessen and WIBank terms as of today.
Buying a company: €450k with a bank, €1.29M without →What actually happens between a first confidential message and the notary appointment, described by a buyer that holds companies for good: the NDA before any detail changes hands, an indicative offer inside two weeks, a focused review, and a handover where the name, the team, and the site all stay.
Selling your company to a permanent owner →