Succession Planning
Succession planning is the process of ensuring that your business is successful without you, it’s about protecting your business and your assets to ensure that the right people are entitled to those assets in the future. Whether you have a business or whether it’s for personal wealth protection purposes, we can help to restructure your business affairs and family arrangements so that people understand who will be getting what in the event of your exit from the business or your passing.
Succession planning is important for nearly every business as it helps to create value that will continue even when you decide to exit the business. It is important for clients that are considering the sale of their business or taking a more passive role in the business in the future. It can involve putting systems in place so that the business can run without you, improving sales, improving margins and controlling costs. Planning for business succession can be complicated and emotionally difficult but will ensure that the retirement that the owner envisaged is possible, that family and business relationships are kept in tact and will increase the business’ chance of survival. Identifying and training up the right employees capable of taking on future positions of leadership is a key part of this process.
Generally the earlier you start on your succession plan the better. Considering your succession plan when you start a business as part of a wider plan to ensure your business is always ready for transition is optimal, but in reality, most owners are so busy with the day-to-day running of the business to spend time planning for something they don’t for see happening for a number of years.
We can help to take the emotions out of the process of succession planning. We can identify key contacts (lawyer, financial adviser, banker, insurance adviser and family counsellor etc.) or areas of consideration for your specific needs and help to create a realistic timeframe for your exit. We can help you to make your dreams for the future a reality and ensure your exit is as smooth and fair as possible.
On a personal front, we can help you to protect your assets through such as trust formation and structuring so that you can have security that your family is protected in the event of any unforeseen situation.
Business Entry
Buying into business ownership can outperform many other forms of investment, especially where value can be added by the addition of your specialist expertise or skill.
If you’ve decided that buying a business might be the right move for you, our team will highlight some of the potential pitfalls of a business purchase, such as the potential for such businesses to be overpriced. We will walk you through the compliance and registration requirements necessary to make such a purchase and ensure you are correctly structured for tax purposes. We will educate you on various information outputs you will need to produce in order to cover your accounting requirements and ensure you are well versed on the system requirements your new business venture may need to consider. We will also point you in the right direction to ensure your valuation, lending, legal and insurance needs are covered.
Business Exit
Exiting a business is a scary prospect for most, not only from a financial aspect but often from the emotional connection business owners have to a business. We can help you through this process and help to identify other avenues of investment post sale.
Once appropriate succession planning has taken place (see succession planning) and you have got your business prepared for sale (ie. Have cleaned up your Balance Sheet and have a demonstrated upward trend of income over the past few years) and it comes time for an owner to exit a business, potential buyers will want to see a set of financial statements that set out business performance over the past few years.
We can help with the preparation of such financial records for the purpose of sale and can also help to ensure you correctly account for the sale of your business and your business assets upon sale, as well as ensure your companies’ legal and Inland Revenue Requirements are met.
