“When we came to consider our long term retirement plans and the future of the business we faced a challenge. We were keen to bank some of the value in our business now rather than gamble on finding a purchaser at our future exit date but preferred the option of maintaining control of the business in the meantime.

CCV was able to offer us a flexible deal that met these requirements. We agreed to sell an initial stake in the business, with an agreed date upon which we can sell our remaining shares at a pre-agreed valuation. This provides us with certainty of exit when we feel the time is right and provides stability for our staff going forwards.

I think that without this flexibility we would have faced a difficult choice between selling now and becoming employees, or holding on for a future date and gambling that we could find a suitable buyer at the time.

Even though CCV is a minority shareholder in our business we have access to IT, compliance and HR support and participate in many of the sales and training programmes to develop our staff. Of course as part of a group there are additional requirements of us and an increased reporting environment is one of the challenges we face being somewhat different to the systems we developed internally over the years.

On balance the deal with CCV has had a positive impact and we feel that our business will continue to thrive when we choose to retire."