Welcome back to The Legacy Brief.

Heirly's monthly dispatch on the Canadian business acquisition market. Short, data-backed, and worth your time. Here is what we are watching this month.

The Market Pulse

For every 10 buyers looking to acquire an established Canadian business, only 7 owners are ready to sell.

That is a seller's market. It means the strongest businesses are meeting real, competing demand, and that for now, owners sit on the scarcer, stronger side of the table. The study behind it, from the Business Development Bank of Canada, also found that $300 billion in business value will change hands over the next 5 years, and that 61% of owners are now aged 50 or older.

What makes this striking is that the demand held through a difficult first half. Canada met the technical definition of a recession early in 2026, a shallow and heavily debated one, then returned to growth, with real GDP rising 0.5% in April. Energy prices climbed on the conflict in the Middle East. Through all of it, buyers kept moving. PwC's mid-year update, released in June, found Canadian deal volume held steady, 658 transactions in the first quarter, right in line with last year's pace. Their conclusion was blunt: inflation, not weak demand, is the market's real worry.

The supply side, meanwhile, is still building. The CFIB estimates more than $2 trillion in business assets will change hands this decade, yet only 9% of owners have a formal plan in place. As more owners reach retirement, more businesses reach the market, and today's imbalance begins to close.

The buyers are already here, and they are not waiting for perfect conditions. What is scarce is the introduction.

What We Are Watching

Three things into the second half: the Bank of Canada's next rate decision on July 15, the CUSMA trade review and what it means for cross-border deals, and whether the supply of businesses coming to market begins to catch up with the demand that is clearly already there.

The Question

This month we asked: how do you know when it is the right time to sell?

"When demand is ahead of supply."

Timing is not only about you. It is about the market you sell into. Selling when buyers outnumber sellers, as they do right now, means motivated, capitalized buyers are competing for what took you decades to build, rather than the reverse.

"When you know your number."

The owners with the clearest sense of timing all start the same way, with an honest, independent sense of what the business is worth today. Not a hope. A number. It changes every decision that follows.

"When the right buyer is there, not just any buyer."

The best outcomes are rarely about the highest bid. They are about the buyer who understands the business and is ready to carry it forward. That is a matter of matching the right two parties, which is precisely the work Heirly does privately, with a binding NDA in place before any details are shared.

A Note From Toyin

Something I keep noticing in the conversations I have with owners.

The ones who feel most in control are rarely reacting to the market. They understood their position early, what they have built, what it is worth, and who the right buyer would be, long before they needed to act.

Even through an uncertain year, the market has quietly stayed on their side.

If you have been turning this over, even privately, that is usually the sign it is worth understanding your options.