Pass on the business, not a boardroom war.
Most family businesses don’t fail because the next generation can’t run them — they fail because ownership and control were never formally transitioned. We help promoters structure a clean handover of shares, decision-making, and responsibility, on their terms and their timeline.
The business survives. The family is what fractures.
Four patterns show up again and again in promoter families that skip formal succession planning.
Nothing was ever written down
Verbal understandings between siblings about "who gets what" rarely survive a parent's death intact — everyone remembers the conversation differently.
No agreed valuation method
Without a pre-agreed formula, every family member has an incentive to argue the business is worth whatever benefits them most.
No exit route for the uninvolved
Children who don't work in the business still inherit shares — and with no buy-sell mechanism, they're stuck as a minority owner with no way out.
Control and ownership were never separated
Splitting equity equally among heirs often means splitting decision-making equally too — a recipe for deadlock when siblings disagree.
Four documents that carry the business forward.
A proper ownership transition isn’t one document — it’s a set of interlocking agreements that answer every hard question before it becomes a family argument.
A shareholder agreement that actually gets used
We draft (with your legal counsel) a shareholder or family constitution that spells out voting rights, board seats, dividend policy, and what happens if a shareholder wants to exit, divorces, or passes away — before any of those events happen, not after.
An independent, pre-agreed valuation formula
Rather than negotiating a price under emotional duress, we help you lock in a valuation methodology — audited book value, EBITDA multiple, or independent appraisal — that everyone agrees to while relations are still calm.
A buy-sell agreement funded before it's needed
A buy-sell agreement gives family members or the company itself the right (or obligation) to purchase a departing or deceased owner's shares at the agreed valuation — often funded through a keyman or business protection insurance policy so cash is there when it's needed.
A next-generation readiness plan
Not every heir wants to, or should, run the business. We help identify and prepare a successor — whether that's a child, a professional CEO, or a hybrid structure — with a phased handover timeline instead of an abrupt one.
Valuation is where most family disputes actually start.
Siblings rarely argue over whether to sell shares to each other — they argue over the price. A share transferred at a figure one heir believes is too low (or too high) can poison family relationships for decades, long after the transaction is done. That’s why the valuation formula has to be agreed before anyone knows who will be buying and who will be selling — when the incentive to argue either way is roughly equal for everyone at the table.
We work alongside your chartered accountant and legal counsel to fix a methodology — audited net asset value, a capitalised-earnings multiple, or a rotating panel of independent valuers — and write it directly into the shareholder agreement, so it’s a formula to apply, not a negotiation to win.
Don’t let the business outlive the family that runs it.
One conversation is all it takes to start. We’ll map your ownership structure, your successors, and build the agreements that keep both intact.
Book a Succession Consult