What happens if my industry licence takes longer to approve than my closing date allows?

This is a common and serious timing risk, since regulatory licensing processes generally run on their own schedule and have little regard for a deal's target closing date. If your buyer's required industry licence hasn't come through by the date you'd otherwise close, you're generally left with a few practical choices: pushing the closing date back, structuring an interim arrangement where the seller continues operating (or the buyer operates under some transitional authorization, if the regulator permits it) until the licence is approved, or, in some cases, closing on everything except the licensed operations and completing that piece separately once approval comes through.

Which option makes sense depends heavily on what the specific licensing regime allows and how the business functions without it — some businesses simply cannot legally operate at all without the licence in place, which limits your options considerably.

Because licence approval timelines are outside your control and rarely predictable, build meaningful buffer into your closing timeline from the outset and have a contingency plan ready. A Treadstone business lawyer can help structure the deal to absorb this kind of delay.