The headlines are everywhere – a high percentage of family businesses have no formal succession plan – and then the story launches into the usual tropes about estate planning, life insurance, choosing a successor, etc. But maybe we should be turning this upside down? After all, by necessity, a family business succession involves two generations – the incumbent and the rising – and so much of the thinking about succession focusses on (a) the perspective of the…
Most wealth is created through entrepreneurship. When wealth creators think about the legacy they leave to future generations, the most common thing that comes to mind is the wealth itself, which is the product of entrepreneurial activity. But what of the entrepreneurial spirit itself? Gates, Bezos, Musk and others received support from their families in the early stages of their ventures. Family members who are so inclined can more readily access seed capital to fund their ideas….
A recent survey has found that only about a quarter of HNW parents plan to split their wealth equally amongst their children. Factors in the decision include their children having different approaches to money, estrangement, not wanting to support a child’s partner, and adjusting for previous significant financial support. There are also variations for the different care responsibilities of children, and the number of grandchildren. There are two key lessons here: firstly, equal is not…
“How to transition the family business to the next generation?” The answer depends on (a) who is asking (incumbent or rising generation) and (b) when (in the life-cycle of the business) they are asking. More often than not, the question is raised too late – when the incumbent generation is thinking of retirement, when there are already unstated expectations from both generations, and when there is already latent conflict. The key ingredients to a successful…
Family offices (FOs) come in so many shapes and sizes that the term ceases to have specific meaning. It’s simply a set of services provided for a family. The origins of the FO often determine their primary focus: there are plenty of FOs that are simply vehicles for co-investment, or glorified reporting platforms. Having a FO essentially means taking a professional approach to managing the affairs of the family. It’s interesting that 92% of FO…
Wealthy people are a soft target at the best of times. The media revels in sensational stories about wealthy families, especially when things go wrong. And if that wasn’t enough, neo-socialists in the US preach redistribution and question whether the world should have billionaires. The emerging “wealth minimisation” movement encourages inheritors to redistribute “excess wealth” for the betterment of society. In some cases, this is about making up for the “harm” done by the wealth…
Wealthy people broadly come in two flavours – wealth creators and wealth inheritors – and each have very different characteristics. Attitudes to money and wealth are usually established as we grow up and largely remain with us for the duration of our lives. Creators often grow up without a lot of money and therefore have different attitudes to spending and the value of a dollar, are uncomfortable talking about it with their children, and often…
Family business has positives and negatives – our aim should be leverage the positives and seek to mitigate the negatives. One important distinguishing feature of family businesses is that they can embody a sense of purpose. The original purpose of the business founder may have been wealth creation. However, as the business evolves and additional family members join, it’s an opportunity for the family as a group to discuss and articulate their collective values and…
It’s a most quoted statistic – “just 13% of family businesses survive the third generation” – and it has finally been challenged. It comes from a single study of US manufacturing companies in the 1980s, and for some reason it has stuck and become almost axiomatic. But it is deeply flawed. Most importantly, it never compared family businesses to non-family businesses (family businesses on average do last longer), and it also never considered the reasons why those…
Research has shown that in HNW families, daughters were rarely encouraged nor received support to pursue entrepreneurship education. Entrepreneurial families often prepare their daughters and sons differently for their careers. Cultural factors and their associated gender biases may result in the problem being far more pronounced. Things are changing. Some 82 per cent of women from wealthy families expect to inherit substantial wealth over the next 20 years, but 41 per cent of women are…
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