Business Succession Strategies

Ask yourself, if you died or became seriously disabled would there be a plan or direction for the transition of your business to protect it’s value while being sold or otherwise transferred?

You may not, however, have invested time into planning and developing a strategy to keep the business operating in the event of your disability, retirement or death.

The Penning Group regularly counsels owners of privately owned businesses in all facets of business succession planning. We help business owners prepare for a smooth transition of ownership, with the goals of maintaining relationships with family and essential non-family employees and minimizing income and estate taxes.

Planning and developing a strategy to keep the business operating in the event of your disability, retirement or death. This scenario is quite common. More often than not, business owners are so busy managing the day-to-day operations of the company that devising an exit strategy becomes an item on a list of things to do “someday.”

Typical issues in business succession planning include:

• Valuing the business

• Identifying potential future owners and managers

• Maintaining loyalty of key employees through incentives

• Fair treatment of family members active in the business versus those who are not

With full understanding that business succession planning is closely related to personal estate planning, the depth of our experience in both areas provides our clients the opportunity to comprehensively prepare for both the exit from their business and the management and transfer of their personal estate.