Entrepreneurs &
Entrepreneurial
Families
Advisory
Packages
en-US
We support entrepreneurs and their families at every stage of their business and family journey, offering strategic legal and tax advice that promotes business growth, protects personal wealth, and unites the family in their endeavors. Our advisory services for entrepreneurs combine practical business management expertise with technical proficiency, helping you seize opportunities and confidently overcome challenges.
Your company is growing and is out of its start-up phase, or perhaps it has already been active for several generations? Because of the potentially significant tax burden that can arise in an unplanned inheritance situation, combined with questions of inheritance law, the first step is a tax-focused contingency plan (including a valid, clearly formulated, and tax-optimized will, along with all relevant powers of attorney).
In our view, a comprehensive succession plan is then essential. From a tax perspective, it involves the timely and tax-optimized transfer of ownership. From a holistic viewpoint, it’s about managing a smooth handover of assets and business responsibilities and allowing the transferor to let go. Such processes, which often involve deeply personal and emotional components, are managed in close collaboration with Dr. Karin Ebel and the team at ebel&team.
For example, we develop NextGen programs. In the case of complex company structures, reorganization may be necessary before a transfer. If you plan to sell externally or at least bring in external capital for growth scenarios, we advise you on structuring the sale in a legally and tax-efficient manner and, if needed, develop retrospective concepts for an appropriate holding structure. At the same time, in conjunction with the right network partners, we create concepts with you for post-“cash event” holding and investment structures.
Together with our network partners, we can set up a roadmap to a family office structure (see reference to SFO). If necessary, after the cash event, we can also help separate existing holdings—held together with your former co-founders—from a legal and tax perspective so that each party can pursue their individual investment strategy.
As a company grows and the number of participating shareholders increases, so does the likelihood that some shareholders and/or directors will spend at least part of their time abroad—even for operational reasons.
At the family level, international educational paths are increasingly becoming the norm. In parallel, a family’s investment portfolio can also become more international, which can be sensible given secular developments. All these scenarios involve a variety of domestic and foreign legal and tax implications. For instance, taking up residence abroad without proper planning can trigger so-called exit taxation on business shares, in which the tax authority assumes a fictitious sale. At the same time, unintended permanent establishments can be created abroad, and domestic assets might be allocated there.
There are also risks of potential double taxation, not only on income but also in inheritance cases. Legally speaking, questions about applicable inheritance law can arise, and emigration may impact marital property rights. Wills and prenuptial agreements may lose their validity.We start by analyzing your overall situation and develop viable concepts for specific scenarios. We work with you and, if needed, with the experts managing your assets to create a legal and tax architecture capable of withstanding scrutiny. This includes ensuring global legal compliance with our global network of experts.
In these times of geopolitical fragmentation and domestic challenges, family wealth is subject to various disruptive regulatory and secular threats. At the same time, the family itself can put pressure on the assets. Together with you—and if applicable, your existing partners and/or our network partners—we discuss the questions you should ask yourself for the future, and we jointly design a strategic, tactical, and secular asset allocation. Our particular contribution lies in embedding the risks posed by family dynamics, legal considerations, and taxes into a robust wealth structure. We work with you and your family to develop a values-based framework and governance structure, posing the critical questions for the long-term shared management of the assets. That is, however, just one piece of the puzzle. For this reason, we work closely with your asset advisors and/or our network (Dr. Karin Ebel and her team at ebel&team, as well as Christian Hammes of eta Family Office) in this area.
Entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial families are often still engaged in entrepreneurial endeavors—also in the investment arena—both during their company’s operational phase and after a sale. Here, the asset classes in question are often venture capital (VC) and private equity (PE). The range here spans direct investments, funds, and fund-of-funds. We feel it is important to bring families together with regard to experience and how to build such portfolios and gain access. We can also assist in family processes when divergent preferences or perspectives arise, and we develop legal solutions for differing investment strategies within the family—even up to establishing family-run funds. We can review your PE and VC fund commitments from a tax standpoint and identify the right holding structure for you. We are also specialists in ongoing tax services and tax returns related to VC and PE funds, including all relevant investment taxation issues.
