Journal

Succession insights

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

  1. Handing Over a Practice or a Firm When Its Value Sits in People and Licences

    In a medical practice, a pharmacy or an audit firm, clients follow a person and licences carry a name. Twelve checks that set the order of the handover.

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  2. Marital Property and Company Shares: What a Marriage Contract Costs, and What Its Absence Costs When You Hand Over

    A marriage contract costs a few thousand. Without one, a divorce or death during a handover can mean a money claim on half the company. Item by item.

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  3. Paid in the Buyer's Shares: The Part of Your Price That Is Really an Investment

    A buyer offers part of the price in its own shares. What that paper is worth, listed or not, the clauses to demand, the tax ties, and when to refuse.

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  4. Selling a Sole Proprietorship: The Liquidation Gain Taxed Apart, and the Date That Decides It

    No shares to sell, so the gain is income. How separate taxation from 55 works, why the closing date matters to the quarter, and when to incorporate first.

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  5. Selling to a third party when the children said no: what you tell them, and when

    The children declined and the company goes to a third party. What you tell them, when, and how much of the price to share, so it is not held against you.

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  6. The Buyer Sells Again Two Years Later: Four Myths of the Owner Who Watches the Company Change Hands Once More

    The acquirer resells your former SME two years after closing. What the contract could provide for, what it cannot prevent, and what is left to accept.

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  7. AHV contributions after the sale: a seller with no gainful activity still pays

    Between closing and 65, a seller without a job pays AHV contributions on wealth, sale proceeds included. The timeline, from T-24 months to reference age.

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  8. Keeping a minority stake after you sell: what has to be in writing before you sign

    Exit, price, dividends, information, articles: the points a seller who keeps 10 to 30 percent after the sale must settle before closing, not after it.

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  9. Turning down an offer without closing the door: what a no costs, and what a badly worded no costs on top

    Fees already spent, months lost, a candidate kept in reserve: what declining an offer costs an SME owner, and how to say no without losing the buyer.

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  10. Handing over a valley business when the pool of buyers is the village

    An outside buyer, a regional merger or a sale to a supplier or customer: the criteria for deciding when your SME sits far from the centres.

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