If family businesses happily sell out to big private equity players at a hefty price tag, they risk being held responsible for the investors’ subsequent actions.

Morrisons, the supermarket chain, is the latest large UK business to attract the attention of buy-out firms. The business is being stalked by a number of private equity firms, including Fortress and Clayton Dubilier & Rice. A bidding war is expected to play out.

The business pages in the UK are now dominated by warning cries from the good and great about our biggest and best British businesses being sold out to foreign concerns, who — the argument goes — have very little regard for the headcount in the UK nor any commitment to continue using UK suppliers and partners.

In fact, a number of senior business figures have urged the government to take more proactive steps to intervene in these processes — and stop more buy-outs from taking place.

We have previously written about the risks of selling a business. In particular, the risk that stakeholders, such as employees and financial partners, may assume that the business is facing difficulty.

But this new vein of commentary poses family businesses and other private concerns with another new reputation risk when selling a business: the risk that you are seen as selling off a strong British business to the highest seller, knowing that they are going to potentially slice and dice the business.

Family businesses selling out to big private equity buyers run the risk of being seen as selling off the ‘family china’, so to speak, to line their pockets — before riding off into the sunset as the business is asset-stripped, employees sacked, and supply chains moved out of the UK.

If the business cuts headcount a month later, will it be blamed on the outgoing family ownership? What happens if the business is subsequently mismanaged, and goes bust 2 or 3 years down the line? Will that come back to bite the family? And this is without the risk of government intervention in the actual deal itself.

This may be an unfair, partial, and one-sided view. But family businesses cannot complain about their motives and positive intentions being misunderstood if they are not communicating them in the first place.

Sensitive sales need to be thought through carefully — and a sophisticated communications strategy must be part of the mix to control perceptions.