Sold My Company, Now What? The First 90 Days and Who to Hire

The money lands on a Tuesday. By Friday, the bank that handled the closing has proposed a discretionary mandate, two other private banks have asked for a meeting, the M&A advisor’s wealth arm has sent a deck, and a friend has a fund that is “closing soon”. The entire proceeds still sit in one current account. The question founders type into a search bar that week is blunt: I sold my company, now what? Our answer is equally blunt. The first 90 days after a liquidity event are for not making irreversible decisions.

That sounds passive. It is not. Three things have to be settled before anyone is hired or anything is signed: where the cash sits relative to the €100,000-per-bank deposit guarantee, where you will be tax resident, and who coordinates the rest without selling you a product. Everyone else in your inbox will tell you to “hire advisors”. This piece gives the order, the reason for the order, and how each person in it is paid.

The €50M figure used below is an illustration, not a client amount, and nothing here is tax or legal advice for your case.

Sold your company: what the first 90 days are for

A liquidity event is the moment an illiquid holding, here the company, becomes cash. A founder’s wealth changes nature on that day. Before it, most of the value sat in one illiquid asset that you understood better than anyone. After it, the same value is liquid, visible to every bank, and steered by nobody in particular. The habits that built the company, speed and conviction, are the wrong defaults for the months after it is gone.

Most decisions in this period come in two kinds. Some can be undone cheaply: which bank holds cash this quarter, which bills mature in which month. Others cannot: a ten-year private equity commitment, a holding company in the wrong country, a change of tax residence made in the wrong order, a gift to a child, a mandate whose exit triggers costs and taxable sales. The 90-day rule is simple. In the first three months, make only decisions of the first kind.

Where the proceeds sit while you decide

What to do with money after selling a business has a short answer for the first quarter: park it, deliberately, in instruments you can read. There are three practical places, and most founders end up using all three.

Bank deposits. A deposit is a loan to the bank. Above the guarantee described in the next section, it is an unsecured claim on that bank’s balance sheet. Deposits are the right home for operating cash and the next few months of spending. They are a poor home for tens of millions at a single institution.

Money market funds. A money market fund holds short-term instruments. Its assets are held by a depositary in the fund’s name, outside the balance sheet of the bank that sold it to you, and that separation is the point. The fund carries no deposit guarantee and can lose value, so read which type it is, what it holds and what it charges before you buy.

Short government bills held in custody. Bilhetes do Tesouro in Portugal, Letras del Tesoro in Spain and their equivalents elsewhere are a direct claim on the state. Securities held in a custody account remain the client’s property if the custodian fails; esisuisse, the Swiss deposit protection scheme, states this plainly for Swiss banks. The cost is operational: maturities have to be laddered and reinvested, and someone has to watch the calendar.

We do not quote yields here because they change weekly. What does not change is the discipline. On day one, build a single sheet with one line per position: institution, account holder (you, your spouse, a company), instrument, amount, how much of it a guarantee covers, maturity date, and who can give instructions. If the proceeds arrived in a holding company, that company is the account holder, and it counts as one depositor with one limit at each bank. Update it every time money moves. It is the first version of your consolidated reporting: one view of everything the family owns, across every bank and entity.

The €100,000 guarantee is per bank and per depositor, and a company sale is not a “temporary high balance”

Every EU deposit guarantee scheme works from Directive 2014/49/EU. Article 6(1) sets the coverage level at €100,000 for the aggregate deposits of each depositor. Two accounts at the same bank share one limit. The same money split across two banks with separate licences carries two.

Article 6(2) adds temporary cover above €100,000, for at least three and no more than twelve months after the money is credited, in three categories only: (a) deposits from real estate transactions relating to private residential properties; (b) deposits that serve social purposes laid down in national law and are linked to particular life events, such as marriage, divorce, retirement, dismissal, redundancy, invalidity or death; and (c) deposits based on insurance benefits or compensation for criminal injuries or wrongful conviction.

The sale of a company is not on that list. Category (b) is defined in national law, so the detail varies by member state, and it is worth asking each bank in writing what its scheme covers. Portugal and Spain cover the same three categories and nothing more. Plan as if your proceeds carry €100,000 of protection per bank, because that is what the text says.

The rules are moving, but not in a founder’s favour on this point. Directive (EU) 2026/804, published on 20 April 2026, raises the temporary cover to at least €500,000 for six months, allows up to €2.5M for residential property transactions by an individual, and places the burden of proving eligibility on the depositor. Member states must apply it from 11 May 2028. It adds no category for the sale of a business.

Two further points matter at this size. Deposit schemes are sized for ordinary failures: esisuisse puts the total Swiss banks provide for payouts at CHF 7.9 billion, 1.6% of all protected deposits. And the guarantee is a floor, not a risk model; keeping €50M under it would take five hundred banks. The useful question is how much you want exposed to any one bank’s balance sheet, and how much should sit in custody instead.

Settle tax residence before you build anything

The sequence is residence, then structure, then entities, then banks. Each step depends on the one before it. The tax treatment of a holding company depends on where its shareholder lives. A bank’s onboarding file asks for your tax residence on the first page, because the bank reports your accounts to that country under the OECD Common Reporting Standard. An entity built for one residence often has to be unwound for another, and unwinding costs more than waiting. This is the core of wealth planning and structuring: the design follows the residence, never the reverse. When residence, banks and entities span Dubai, Portugal and Switzerland, cross-border wealth planning sets out how the pieces are coordinated.

The questions below are for your tax advisors, in the country you are leaving and in the one you are going to. We list them because founders often do not know they exist, not because we answer them.

• Which date counts? Signing, closing or the release of escrow, and where were you resident on each of them?
• What is still to come? Earn-outs, deferred consideration and escrow releases may be taxed when paid, in the country where you then live.
• Spain, if you are leaving. Article 95 bis of the personal income tax law (Ley 35/2006) taxes unrealised gains on shareholdings above set thresholds when a long-standing resident moves abroad. Ask whether it reaches what you still hold, including any rollover equity.
• Spain, if you are arriving. The special regime for inbound workers in Article 93 of the same law, known as the Beckham regime, has conditions on activity and prior residence. Ask whether your situation qualifies and what it does and does not cover.
• Portugal. IFICI, in Article 58.º-A of the Estatuto dos Benefícios Fiscais, requires that you were not tax resident in Portugal in any of the five previous years, that you carry out an eligible activity, and that you register by 15 January of the year after you become resident. It is a regime for people working in qualifying roles, not a regime for capital.
• UAE. A tax residency certificate under Cabinet Decision No. 85 of 2022 rests on 183 days of presence in a 12-month period, or on 90 days with further conditions, or on your principal residence and centre of financial and personal interests being in the UAE. Ask which test you will meet and how you will evidence it.
• Switzerland. Lump-sum taxation based on expenditure is agreed with the canton and is not offered by every canton. Ask before you choose where to live.

Capital gains on the sale of quotas: confirm before the residence changes

Founders in Portugal have often sold a sociedade por quotas, and the first search is usually about mais-valias na venda de quotas. The rate is the wrong first question. The right ones come before any move. Were you tax resident in Portugal on the date of the sale? How is the acquisition value of the quotas documented, including capital increases and supplementary contributions? Is part of the price deferred, and what happens to that part if you become resident elsewhere before it is paid? Does a double tax treaty allocate the gain? Gains of this kind fall under category G of IRS, and the answers decide whether a change of residence helps, hurts or is irrelevant. Get them in writing before you book the removal van.

The pitching phase: life after selling a business

A sale is public within days. Registry filings, the press release and the buyer’s announcement put your name on every private bank’s prospect list. What follows is predictable: mandate proposals, invitations to co-invest, funds in their last close, structured notes, a property “off market”, and the friend with the fund. Some of these will be good. None of them is urgent.

The ninety-day rule works here too. Answer every proposal the same way: in writing, thank them, and ask for the offer in writing with all-in costs, lock-ups and exit terms. File what arrives. When the investment policy statement exists (the written rules on spending, risk and liquidity that every manager is measured against), you will have a stack of real alternatives to test against it, and a clear method for doing so in how to evaluate an investment opportunity.

Life after selling a business has a personal side that drives many of the financial mistakes. The calendar empties, and the identity that came with running the company goes with it. We have described this founder in what wealth advisory actually is: the decisions of the first months are taken under urgency, without a common architect, and they shape the next twenty years. Much of that urgency is personal, not analytical. Give the restlessness a project that is not an investment.

I just sold my company for €50 million. Do I need a family office, and who should I hire first?

Not necessarily. At €50M the answer depends on complexity, not on the number: how many jurisdictions, entities, family members and operating assets you carry. Most founders need the functions of a family office before its staff. Hire first an independent coordinator paid only by the family, then tax and legal counsel, then banks, and the investment manager last.

For scale: the 317 single-family offices in the UBS Global Family Office Report 2025 serve families with an average net worth of USD 2.7 billion. That is the population most family office benchmarks describe, several dozen times the proceeds in our example. Do I need a family office sets out the six functions a family office performs and what each model costs per year. The short version for a founder in the first year: you need the functions now and probably not the building.

Who to hire after selling your company, in order

The order below follows one principle. People who decide how much goes where come before people who are paid according to how much they receive. That is how you keep the shape of the plan independent of the commercial interest of whoever executes it. It is also how we approach investment and wealth architecture: the design is written first, and execution is bought against it.

Two practical notes. Choose banks against a written brief, not a pitch: what each bank is for, what it may hold, what lending you might need, which reports you expect. And give the first mandate part of the proceeds, with a review date; a manager who knows the remainder is undecided has a reason to earn it.

Family office first hire: CFO, controller or coordinator?

Searches for “family office CFO” usually come from founders who assume the first hire is a senior finance person on the payroll. In a working single-family office, the CFO owns the balance sheet of the family: entity accounts, cash forecasting across banks, tax compliance calendars, consolidated reporting, lending, and the control of who can move money. It is a real job when there are a dozen entities, several jurisdictions, property, operating businesses and staff.

In the first year after a single exit, it is usually too early. There is no structure to run yet, and a CFO hired in month two tends to build the structure that justifies the salary. The first hire is a function, not a person. Coordination, bookkeeping, consolidated reporting and tax compliance can each be bought on fixed fees and moved in-house one at a time, when the work makes a salary cheaper than the invoices. When you do hire, hire a controller who reports to the family, and keep investment decisions outside the role.

How each advisor is paid, and why it decides the order

There are four ways people in this market are paid. Hourly or fixed fees are paid by you for a defined piece of work; they create no incentive about where your money goes. Retainers are fixed fees for a continuing role; same property. Basis points on assets pay the manager or bank in proportion to what they hold; they reward gathering assets and keeping them. Retrocessions and other inducements are payments from product providers to whoever placed you in the product; you pay them indirectly through the product’s costs.

In the EU, MiFID II restricts the last category. A firm that tells you its advice is independent, or that runs a portfolio under a discretionary mandate, where the manager decides what to buy and sell within agreed limits, may not accept and retain fees, commissions or other monetary benefits from third parties for that service (Article 24(7)(b) and Article 24(8)). Other services, and advisors outside the EU, may still be paid that way. Ask every candidate the same question in writing: who pays you, other than me, in connection with my money?

This is why the order matters. People paid by the hour or the job can tell you to hold more cash or delay a mandate without losing income. Banks and managers are paid on what they receive. Hire them after the plan exists, and the plan sets their scope. Hire them first, and their scope tends to become the plan. For founders with ties to the Gulf and assets in Europe, family office advisory firms for GCC families sorts the candidates by the job each one does.

Mistakes founders make in the first year after an exit

All proceeds at one bank, far above the guarantee. Usually the bank that ran the closing account. The fix takes a week: a second and third institution, part of the money in custody, and the single sheet described above.

A discretionary mandate signed in week two. Without an investment policy statement setting spending needs, risk limits and liquidity, the manager’s model portfolio becomes your strategy by default. Exiting it later costs fees, and often a tax bill.

Entities set up before tax residence is settled. A holding company formed in month one in the country you are leaving can be the wrong shape for the country you move to.

No consolidated view across banks. Three banks, each with its own format and performance method, give three partial pictures and no total. The case study on what to do after selling your company shows how quickly four banks and eleven entities become unreadable.

Gifts or loans to family before a plan. Gifts made before residence, marital property and succession planning are settled can carry tax and legal effects nobody intended. Write the plan, then be generous inside it.

Hiring the advisor who ran the deal as the advisor for the money. The M&A firm knows the company better than anyone. That is a different skill from designing what comes after it, and many deal advisors have a wealth arm with its own commercial interest. If you hire them, get a second view from someone with no stake in the outcome.

Before you hire anyone

PWA — Private Wealth Advisory designs and runs the operating layer around private wealth: the sequence, the brief for each bank and advisor, the consolidated view, and the oversight that keeps it all coherent. PWA does not manage money, hold mandates, take commissions or give regulated investment, tax or legal advice. We work alongside your tax advisors, lawyers and banks, and we are paid by the family, and only by the family.

For a founder in the first months after a sale, the fastest first step is a Wealth Operations Review: a written view of where the proceeds sit, which decisions are pending, in what order to take them and what each will cost, delivered in ten working days with a 90-minute working session. The Architecture Blueprint and the Oversight Retainer that can follow are fixed fee, by proposal.

Questions we hear

Sold my business, now what should I do first?

Do not make irreversible decisions for about ninety days. First, list where every euro sits, and decide deliberately how much stays at each bank above the €100,000 deposit guarantee. Second, confirm your tax residence with a tax advisor. Third, appoint one independent coordinator, paid only by you, before signing any mandate or forming any entity.

What should I do with the money after selling a business?

Park it before you invest it. Hold the proceeds across several institutions in deposits, money market funds or short government bills held in custody, and write down where each euro sits. Then agree an investment policy statement covering spending, risk and liquidity. Only after that should any manager receive a discretionary mandate over part of it.

Is the €100,000 deposit guarantee per bank or per person?

Both. In the EU, Directive 2014/49/EU covers €100,000 per depositor per credit institution, so two accounts at one bank share one limit. Joint accounts are usually counted per holder. Higher temporary cover exists only for listed events such as a home sale or insurance payout; proceeds from selling a company are not on that list.

Who should a founder hire first after selling a company?

An independent coordinator paid only by the family, who holds the full picture and sequences everyone else. Next come tax advisors in the origin and destination countries and a lawyer for corporate, succession and family matters. Banks and custodians follow, chosen against a written brief. Investment managers come last, once an investment policy statement exists.

Should I sign a discretionary mandate right after selling my company?

Usually not. A discretionary mandate hands investment decisions to a manager, and signing one in the first weeks means the manager’s model sets your risk before you have defined it. Write an investment policy statement first, compare at least two managers against it, check how each is paid, and start with part of the proceeds.

How long does the adjustment after selling a business take?

Plan for twelve months, not twelve weeks. The first ninety days are for protecting the proceeds and settling residence and advisors. The rest of the year is for building the structure, the reporting and the investment programme, and for working out what the founder does next. Decisions made in month one tend to outlast the adjustment.

Sources

All pages opened and checked on 19 October 2026.

• European Parliament and Council, Directive 2014/49/EU on deposit guarantee schemes, 16 April 2014, Article 6. Supports: €100,000 per depositor; temporary high balances for at least three and no more than twelve months; the three categories (residential property, life events laid down in national law, insurance or criminal-injury compensation); no category for company sales. legislation.gov.uk
• European Parliament and Council, Directive (EU) 2026/804 amending Directive 2014/49/EU, 30 March 2026, published in the Official Journal on 20 April 2026. Supports: temporary high balances raised to at least €500,000 for six months; up to €2,500,000 for residential property transactions by an individual; burden of proof on the depositor (new Article 7a); repayment within seven working days (Article 8(1)); transposition and application from 11 May 2028. Checked against the Spanish-language Official Journal text; the English text on EUR-Lex did not load on 19 October 2026. boe.es · eur-lex.europa.eu
• Fundo de Garantia de Depósitos (Portugal), statutory depositor information sheet (fgd.pt did not load on 19 October 2026; figures taken from the sheet each bank must issue) as issued by Caixa de Crédito Agrícola Mútuo de Torres Vedras, January 2024. Supports: €100,000 per depositor per credit institution; joint accounts per depositor; one-year cover for the three categories under RGICSF Article 166.º(2); repayment within 7 working days from 1 January 2024. ccamtv.pt
• Fondo de Garantía de Depósitos de Entidades de Crédito (Spain), home page and frequently asked questions. Supports: €100,000 per holder per institution; three-month cover for the same three categories; joint holders covered for their share; 7 working days for cash deposits. fgd.es · fgd.es FAQ
• esisuisse, frequently asked questions. Supports: CHF 100,000 per client and bank; co-owners treated as one separate client; securities in custody remain the client’s property; CHF 7.9 billion system limit, 1.6% of protected deposits; payout timing and the 1 January 2028 target. esisuisse.ch
• United Arab Emirates, Federal Decree-Law No. 6 of 2025 regarding the Central Bank, Article 151 (establishment of specialised funds, including for depositor protection), text as reproduced by UAE Legal Notes (secondary source; centralbank.ae and uaelegislation.gov.ae did not return the article text on 19 October 2026). Supports: the Central Bank may establish such funds; no operating statutory scheme or per-depositor limit that we could verify. uae.shushin.io · Official announcement of the law: uaelegislation.gov.ae
• European Parliament and Council, Directive 2014/65/EU (MiFID II), 15 May 2014, Article 24(7)(b) and 24(8). Supports: firms providing independent advice or portfolio management may not accept and retain third-party fees, commissions or monetary benefits. legislation.gov.uk
• UBS, “UBS Global Family Office Report 2025”, press release, 21 May 2025. Supports: 317 single-family offices surveyed; average net worth USD 2.7 billion. ubs.com
• Autoridade Tributária e Aduaneira, “IFICI: Incentivo Fiscal à Investigação Científica e Inovação”, leaflet, March 2025. Supports: Article 58.º-A EBF; no tax residence in Portugal in the five previous years; eligible activities; registration by 15 January of the following year; category G of IRS. portaldasfinancas.gov.pt
• EY, “UAE issues additional guidance on determination of tax residency for individuals”, tax alert, 21 March 2023. Supports: Cabinet Decision No. 85 of 2022; 183-day test; 90-day test with conditions; principal residence and centre of interests test; effective 1 March 2023. ey.com
• KPMG Switzerland, “Lump-sum taxation”. Supports: expenditure-based taxation is not available in every canton (Zurich, Schaffhausen, Appenzell Ausserrhoden, Basel-Landschaft and Basel-Stadt abolished it). kpmg.com
• Spain, Ley 35/2006 del Impuesto sobre la Renta de las Personas Físicas, consolidated text, Articles 93 and 95 bis. Supports: the inbound-worker regime and the exit tax on shareholdings named in the residence section. boe.es

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Pedro Souto is the founder of PWA — Private Wealth Advisory. He works with UHNW founders, families, and single-family offices to build an independent operating layer around complex wealth — combining markets, analytics, technology, and governance to turn fragmented advice into one coherent picture, and to make someone, finally, responsible for the whole of it.