The purchase timetable and immigration process are separate. Review commitment terms, outstanding consents and handover obligations before assuming the investor can take over on a fixed date. Visa-related escrow may require careful transaction-specific review.
Identify dependencies before agreeing deadlines
Create milestones for seller disclosures, funding, contract completion, application submission and lawful commencement of the investor’s work. Processing, passport return and admission can remain unresolved even when commercial diligence is complete. Explain who operates the business in the meantime.
Do not treat a closing deadline or a seller’s preferred departure date as evidence that an immigration decision will arrive in time. Identify which of the two processes can wait and which cannot. A vendor generally wants certainty and a closing date; an immigration process cannot promise one.
Where possible, negotiate for the sequence to accommodate that reality rather than agreeing a date and hoping. Establish what the buyer's position would be if closing occurs and the immigration outcome is later than expected, including who runs the business in the meantime and on what basis, because operating it personally without appropriate authorization is not an option. Consider also the reverse dependency, since a purchase that has not closed leaves the enterprise's ownership and the investor's commitment unsettled.
Ask counsel which order fits the facts before signing anything with a fixed completion date attached to it.