Do You Need Tax Insurance When Selling Your Business?

About the Episode

There’s an open secret in the M&A world – tax insurance. It lets you take risk off the table and turn it into a negotiating point. Yoav Shans and James Swan, tax experts from McGill and Partners — an insurance broker firm, lay it out clearly. What is tax insurance, how can it impact M&A decisions, who pays for it, and how can it help close your deal? Get answers to these questions, and many more, for buyers and sellers of any size transaction since, as we all know, you can’t escape taxes.

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In this Episode

3:39 What is tax insurance?
4:36 A walk-through of different tax and transaction structures in M&A
11:00 How is tax insurance typically used in M&A transactions?
19:15 What’s the difference between reps and warranties insurance vs. tax insurance?
28:27 What sorts of risks can be insured in a typical private equity deal?
31:19 How does tax insurance work – pricing, exclusions, penalties, etc.?
37:24 How does the underwriting process work, and how is tax insurance priced?
44:44 Who usually pays for tax insurance, and how long is a policy in place?
48:54 Advice to those who want to employ tax insurance in their M&A transaction.

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Meet Our Guest

Yoav Shans

Yoav Shans

Head of Tax at McGill and Partners | New York, New York

Yoav Shans is the Head of Tax at McGill and Partners, where he brings his 15 years of Big 4 M&A tax advisory experience to his role as leader of tax insurance broking.

Prior to joining McGill and Partners in January 2021, Yoav was a senior manager in Ernst & Young’s International Tax & Transaction Services practice. While there, he advised Ernst & Young’s premier corporate and private equity accounts in all aspects of the transaction lifecycle in both domestic and cross-border settings, as well as taxable and tax-free contexts. Yoav’s industry expertise includes diversified industrial products, consumer products/retail, technology/IT solutions, and energy.

Yoav is a licensed CPA in the State of New York and received his bachelor’s degree from CUNY Baruch College’s Zicklin School of Business as a Macaulay Honors Scholar.

Meet Our Guest

James Swan

James Swan

Head of Mergers and Acquisitions at McGill and Partners | London, England

With over 16 years of experience in law, investment banking, M&A insurance broking, and underwriting, James Swan leads McGill and Partners’ Mergers and Acquisitions team.

Prior to joining McGill and Partners, James was Head of Americas at Liberty Global Transaction Solutions, where he was responsible for building and leading the Americas platform. Prior to Liberty, James was a senior M&A broker at Aon before becoming Global COO of Aon M&A and Transaction Solutions. James was previously a private equity lawyer at Weil and at Paul, Weiss and spent nearly six years in investment banking at Citi, where he was a Director and EMEA COO of M&A and EMEA COO of TMT Banking.

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