On 4 November, we hosted our annual Business Leaders’ Dinner at Harry’s, Covent Garden. Founders and leaders of privately owned UK companies gathered beneath the Murano chandeliers for good food, good wine and the kind of conversation that only happens among peers.

This year we did something different. Rather than a single client story, Harry Knight sat down with two of our own sector specialists, Tim Robinson and John Pearson. Both have built businesses. Both have sold them. Both now sit on the other side of the table, advising owners who are where they once were.

Tim founded Doddle, the parcel technology business, and sold it to Blue Yonder in 2023. He has helped establish three businesses and sold all three. John co-founded Virgin Radio and merged it with Chris Evans’s Ginger TV to create Ginger Media, which sold in 2001. He later became chairman of Shazam.

Harry put to them the questions every owner faces sooner or later. How do you time a sale when nobody rings a bell at the top of the market? Is the highest bidder always the right buyer? Where does the leverage come from to win the terms that matter? And when a deal gets difficult, as every deal does, who is on the other end of the phone?

They spoke as people who have been there. As John put it, experience tends to arrive just after you need it.

Most owners sell a business once. The experience has to come from somewhere, and it should come from the people beside you. At Corbett Keeling, that means senior advisers who stay on the deal from the first conversation to completion, including the moment it gets difficult.

After the conversation, the room did what it always does: owners comparing notes, swapping stories and finding they had more in common than they expected.

Thank you to everyone who joined us, and to Tim and John for sharing their stories so generously.

We’re already looking forward to next year’s dinner.

Meet our sector specialists