Wealth Transfer Planning

After spending years or decades building a business, many owners have not prepared for the transition to retirement. The transition of your business to a successor may be the biggest financial event of your life. Indecision is not a viable option.

Comprehensive Coordination

Transitioning your business and preparing for your exit is time intensive and involves organizing all aspects of your business and personal finances. Managing this process while running your business can be overwhelming. That is where our team can help you. Consider us the quarterback of your team leading the strategy and coordinating all of the steps and the interaction of professionals required for a successful transition. From business analysis and advance planning to structuring an exit strategy, we will work closely with your other advisors to help you develop a customized transition plan that meets your specific personal, financial, and business goals. Our deep bench and relationships in the industry mean we can bring in the team you need to create a successful future for you and your business.

As you approach retirement, you have four basic options to consider:

• Transition the business to your children
• Sell the business to employees
• Sell the business to a third party
• Simply close the doors

Advance planning and implementation of a successful exit plan enables you to maximize the value of your business, leave the company to the successor you select, and exit on your timeline with the financial security you need for the future.

Services

• Corporate transactions
• Tax
• Capital raise
• Estate planning
• ERISA (Employee Stock Purchase Plans)
• Real estate
• Environmental
• Intellectual property
• Litigation

Key Planning Steps to a Successful Transition

As quarterback of your transition team, we will work to develop a customized business transition plan that meets your needs. To do this, we follow a proven process that takes you through a series of steps to identify and implement the right solution for your business and future. This process includes:

Identifying your exit objectives. Determine your succession time frame, the value you want or need from the business to meet your personal goals and the individuals or entities to whom you wish to transfer the business.

Evaluating your business and personal financial resources. How much is your business worth today? How much cash flow does it currently generate? How much income do your non-business assets produce? Working with your other professionals, we help you project future cash flow as well as the future value of your business and non-business assets.

Building and preserving business value. Based on the first two steps and working with your other professionals, we make specific recommendations to help grow business value, protect existing value from the actions of others, and preserve company value by minimizing income taxes. Based on your company’s needs, these recommendations may include installing or updating financial reporting systems, aligning employee performance with the attainment of your profitability goals, protecting intellectual property from competitors, or protecting proprietary information through covenants not to compete with key employees.

Selling your company to a third party. If you choose to sell your company to a third-party, we design strategies to improve the likelihood of a successful sale, minimize the taxes you will pay upon sale, and maximize your sale price and terms.

Transferring your ownership to insiders. Insiders are children, co-owners or key employees who often do not have the financial resources to pay owners what their companies are worth. If you choose to transfer your company to insiders, we will assist in the creation of a detailed plan to help you receive the money you desire from your business, minimize the risk of non-payment and ensure that you retain control of the business until you have been fully paid.

Establishing business continuity. As part of your exit plan, we coordinate your business continuity and continuous planning with your lifetime objectives. The purpose is to ensure that your goals are met even if your exit plan is accelerated due to unplanned circumstances.

Personal wealth and estate planning. Aligning your estate plan with exit plan objectives is critical. Our job is to emphasize tax efficiency and ensure that your family receives the amount of annual income necessary to satisfy the financial security goal you set in your exit plan.