Family businesses

We are highly experienced advisers to family businesses.

Being in business with family members can be highly rewarding, but it can also be very challenging. Family businesses are subject to special, often complicated, factors borne out of the relationship between the owner/managers.

Our considerable experience of working with family businesses means that we not only understand these special factors, we also have the expertise to find solutions to them.

Working closely with other specialist advisers, we advise family business clients on a broad range of corporate matters including the reorganisation of shares between family members and family trusts, shareholders' agreements, and disputes.

One key issue affecting the majority of family businesses is succession.  Who will take over the business when the current generation retire?  What exit strategy (if any) do the current family shareholders have in place?

Our experience (supported by sector research) suggests that the vast majority of owner managers have no clear idea how they will exit from their business. Often this will be because there is no one in the next generation who has the ability or desire to assume the reigns.

In these cases it may still be possible to plan for a partial management buy-out with the senior management team being given some of the equity in the business but with a proportion of the ownership being retained by the founder for the benefit of successive generations.

We are very experienced at helping family business clients find solutions to these issues.

We are a founder member of the Association of Family Business Advisers and we are closely associated with the International Centre for Families in Business.

Work experience/case studies:

• We advised a South West property investment group on a £2million restructuring which involved the reorganisation of shares between family members. The commercial rationale for this reorganisation was to realise a capital return for some family members and to enable the Managing Director to obtain more equity than his siblings who were no longer involved in the management of the business.
• We advised a South West specialist fuel distributor on the £2million reorganisation of its group. This transaction involved working closely with the current management and professional family business advisers to find a solution which met the needs of those family members who wished to retain their stake in the family business and those who wished to realise their investment.
• We advised the trustees of a family trust on the receipt of a £300million+ cash offer for the share capital of a very substantial family business in the aggregates sector.