Journal

Succession insights

Practical perspectives on preparing and executing a business succession worldwide, with Swiss expertise.

  1. The Acquisition Holding: What the Company Your Buyer Sets Up Costs You as the Seller

    Your buyer acquires through a holding company formed for the deal. What that structure costs the seller in fees, weeks, deferred price and Swiss tax.

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  2. The Bank Makes Renewing Your Credit Line Conditional on Stabilisation: What It Is Really Asking For

    The bank ties your credit line renewal to clarifying your succession: the risk it is naming, what reassures the committee, and in what order.

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  3. The Family Council: The Body Most Often Missing From Family Successions

    The board governs the company, not the family. What a family council settles between family shareholders, before and after a Swiss family succession.

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  4. The Owner Becomes Unavailable Overnight: What Has to Exist Beforehand

    Accident, illness, hospital: the list of what must already exist when the only person who signs and decides can no longer be reached, in a Swiss SME.

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  5. Two Children Want to Take Over: Deciding Without Splitting the Family

    Two children want the family firm: the real choice is the architecture, not the better candidate. Criteria, the third party, a place for the other.

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  6. Selling a Stake to a Successor or Opening the Capital to an Investor: Two Answers to the Same Need

    Selling a minority stake to a chosen successor or opening the capital to a financial investor: two arrangements, two governances, two horizons.

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  7. Building a Sale File in Ten Days When the Window Is Short

    What an owner can honestly produce in ten working days for a credible sale file, in what order, and what not to improvise.

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  8. Buying Back Pension Years Before a Sale: A Lever With an Expiry Date

    A pension buy-in cuts tax in the years before a sale, but withdrawing capital too soon after gets the deduction reversed. Why timing decides it.

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  9. Changing Canton Before a Sale: What a Tax Move Really Changes for an Owner

    Changing canton before a sale rarely touches the gain itself, but it can weigh heavily on wealth tax and deferred income. The framework for deciding.

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  10. Managing the Wealth From a Sale: Pitfalls of the First 24 Months

    The proceeds land all at once, after decades held inside the company. The most common wealth-management mistakes of the first two years, and how to avoid them.

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