Your clients keep their accountant
No rebrand, no call centre, no "your account has moved". The firms we buy keep trading under their own name with the team clients already know.
Practice acquisitions
Sell Your Accountancy Practice in East Lancashire
East Lancashire's practices serve the engineers, manufacturers and family firms that kept working when the mills closed. Fee bases here are built over generations, and they deserve better than an anonymous listing. We buy practices directly and keep them local.
From Blackburn and Darwen up through Accrington, Burnley, Nelson and Colne, East Lancashire runs on making things. Aerospace suppliers, precision engineers, textile survivors, hauliers and three generations of family firms fill the client lists of the area's practices, and those clients prize two things above all: competence and constancy. The accountant who has done the year end for twenty years is part of the furniture of the business.
That constancy is what a sale should protect, and what our model is built around. The four firms in our group all kept their name, their office and their people when they joined; the group's job is the unglamorous machinery behind them, from technology and compliance support to cover when someone is off. An East Lancashire practice joining the family would be run the same way, by the people its clients already know.
Selling to us is direct and quiet. No broker's commission or engagement fee, no anonymised advert circulating the valley towns where everyone can guess who "a well-established two-partner firm near Burnley" is, and no waiting months for a matching process to produce a stranger. You deal with the group's directors from the first conversation, under NDA whenever you want one.
Whether you are retiring outright, solving a partner mismatch, or want backing to grow without losing your name, tell us about your firm below. We reply personally within two working days.
Why sell to us
A direct buyer, not a broker
Your staff keep their jobs
We buy practices because of the people in them. We support the existing team without overpowering the culture and values that make clients like the firm.
No broker, no commission
We are the buyer, not a middleman. Deal with us directly and there is no listing process, no sale fee and no percentage taken off your price.
Discretion, guaranteed
Nothing reaches your staff, clients or the local grapevine until you decide it should. Early conversations are just that: conversations.
Common questions
Questions sellers ask us
Would you buy a block of fees rather than the whole practice?
Yes, we will consider it. Some owners want to sell their compliance work but keep a specialism, or trim the practice before a full exit later. A block of recurring fees with decent records and loyal clients is a sensible conversation to have with us, and it often becomes the first step in a fuller succession plan.
My partner wants to retire but I don't. Can you work with that?
This is one of the most common situations we see, and one of the hardest for the broker route to handle. Because we keep the firm trading as itself, a partial deal is natural: the retiring partner exits on clean terms, the continuing partner keeps running the firm they know, with the group's backing behind them. Both sides get what they actually wanted.
My clients are mostly trades and manufacturers. Does that suit you?
Very much so. The group's firms already look after CIS subcontractors, engineering shops and owner-managed manufacturers across Merseyside; the work, the software and the client relationships in East Lancashire are the same family of problems. Your clients would not be exotic to us; they would be familiar.
Thank you. Your message has been received. We'll come back to you personally within two working days, and everything you've told us stays confidential.
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Register your interest
A few details are enough to start; share only what you're comfortable with. We reply personally within two working days, in complete confidence.
Who reads this?
Your enquiry goes directly to the group's directors and nobody else. It is never passed to member firm staff or discussed outside that circle.
Prefer to talk?
Call 0151 709 9524 and ask for Chris, or write to hello@stuartmcbain.com and mark it confidential. Both reach the same small circle.
Selling elsewhere?
We also buy practices in: the North West Liverpool Manchester the Wirral Southport St Helens Warrington Chester Preston South Cheshire