Succession arrangements

Sooner or later, everyone who has come into some money in their lifetime, whether by gift or succession or else supplying their own – generally hard – labor gets to thinking about what should happen to it in the future. What is the best way to preserve it, in what form, who for, for what purpose? Basically, this means making succession arrangements.

Making plans gene­rally means taking pre-cautionary mea­sures. In this context, it means not leaving succession issues to chance; but instead, determining them clearly and in good time.

It means setting up now what should happen and how it should happen. The idea is to ensure that everything happens at the right time and in the way it should.

There are two ways of doing this.

The first is to make a will specifying what should happen after a given date.

The other way is to carry out either a partial or total hand-over before that date.

The advantage of the second method is that you can play an important role in the handover itself, affecting its outcome in whatever way you need to.

The main focus of our business activities has become supplying advice and support in relation to the advance design of succession arrangements.

This mainly involves issues of business succession, as well as situations where the biggest part of the succession revolves around real estate.

This needs some explanation. We have the necessary technical expertise. We know the way things work. We are impartial and do not have the sensitivities that result from many years of "water under the bridge". For this reason, we are able to do whatever job that needs to be done completely independently and without any preconceived ideas. Although we have the ability to see the simplest of things, we can often surprise you by coming up with uncomplicated yet ingenious solutions to problems; and these solutions will be both logical and workable. Not only this, we also have the ability to convince everyone affected that these solutions are the right ones.

Business succession

This topic affects everyone who wants to hand over their business without actually giving up the business itself. It also affects everyone who wants to take over a business or profit from the opportunity of starting a business.

The future financial security of all businesses is tied up with the creation of clear succession arrangements. Making these kinds of arrangements, which represent new ground for each and every business owner, demands courage, time and energy. They are often put off until the "right time" – perhaps in the hope that the issues and conflicts involved will somehow resolve themselves in the meantime. Unfortunately, because that just doesn't happen on its own, the "right time" often comes too late. Putting it another way, the best time, the right time is always "now".

No business is like another, and no succession situation is like another. We place your individual situation right at the center of the advice that we give you; and we are always happy to work together with you our client – whenever you want this to happen, that is – to devise a future strategy that is the right one for you in business, organizational, financial and human terms.

Employees, business partners, life partners, children, potential successors and last but not least, the business owner him or herself: all these individuals are affected by succession and succession arrangements.

It is not always easy to find the right successor. It sometimes happens that the candidate first thought of proves to be a poor choice. In this case, we will sit down with you and work out the criteria relevant to the selection. Then, we will work on a strategy to prepare the successor for the tasks he or she will face.

And what happens if no successor can be found for a family business within a family? In this case, we will come up with other options. These could range from outright sale to outside management or even creating a foundation.

In this area, we will not get involved with providing any legal advice. This is done by arrangement with us and you; and will be implemented by selected attorneys, notaries, tax consultants and auditors. But the ideas always come from us. And we check whether these professionals have provided the kind of solutions that will lead to the business success required.

Making succession arrangements from one day to the next and completing them with a few strokes of a pen – this is fantasy, not reality. Experience shows that successful succession arrangements do not result from rash decision-making but from following a consistent plan of action. Even so, both the business and the chosen successor need to be prepared for the transition. Part of this means that existing structures and objectives might need to be rethought and if necessary adapted to take account of any new circumstances. We accompany these processes with both advice and action, where necessary.