When a buyer approaches or a company offers a buyback, the conversation is about the price and the route. Both matter. But the variable that most often changes the position, and the one people think about least, is the date the transaction is treated as complete.
A sale of private shares is not done when you agree to it. It is done when the paperwork says it is: the transfer instrument, the register entry, the company’s own filings. Those can lag the handshake by weeks, and the weeks can cross a year end or cross the line into a longer holding period. If a listing is on the horizon, the timing of the deal relative to it matters too, in ways worth thinking through before anything is signed rather than after.
None of this is a reason to rush or to wait. It is a reason to know, before you agree, which date the transaction will actually carry and what that date does to your position. If a deal is on the table, tell us what stage it is at. Where the date is still movable, that is often where the useful conversation is.