Journal

Succession insights

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

  1. The Red Lines to Set Before the First Offer, Not During the Negotiation

    Net floor price, how long you stay, what happens to your people, exclusivity: the short list of what is not negotiable, written before any buyer speaks.

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  2. Adjusting EBITDA: What a Buyer Adds and Subtracts Before Making an Offer

    The EBITDA in your accounts is not the one behind the offer. From T-24 months to closing: what a buyer adds, subtracts, and where it gets negotiated.

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  3. A Buyer Approaches You Out of the Blue: What to Do with the First Ten Days

    A buyer approaches you without being asked. Reply, hold, or decline: the criteria that decide, and what you can say before any NDA is signed.

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  4. 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 tax.

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  5. 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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  6. 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 the succession.

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  7. 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.

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  8. 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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  9. 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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  10. 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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