Service
Business Succession Planning
Your business is your legacy. It is more than just a financial engine and employer for your family—it is an ongoing source of pride and opportunity for you, your family and employees. It can provide a gateway to philanthropy, community involvement, and community impact.
Business succession planning is a critical element of your business’s future. The Business Succession team at Montgomery McCracken counsels clients in establishing a plan to help business owners achieve their goals, which are often times a desire to ensure continuation of their business and at the same time achieve the maximum monetary and non-monetary return on the founder’s investment.
We are well-versed in helping clients address the challenges of family, employees, customers and competitors during and in anticipation of times of change.
Our team helps craft plans that establish the who, what, when, why, and how changes in ownership and management are to occur and be implemented.
Planning is the key to future success for everyone whose efforts have helped the business grow. The existence of a succession plan highlights your commitment to your business’s long-term growth and engenders confidence with customers, lenders, employees and key suppliers.
Montgomery mccracken helps business owners create succession plans in a variety of areas. Some of the matters typically handled in the process include the following:
- Preparing buy sell and shareholder’s agreements
- Sales to private equity investors
- Sales to employees
- Sales or gifts of interests to family members to pass equity interests to family members or trusts in a tax-efficient way
- Design drafting and assisting in the implementation of employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs)
- Addressing governance issues for the short-term and long-term
- Creation of family limited partnerships
- Tax planning, in particular to minimize capital gains
- Reviewing pensions and retirement accounts
- Reviewing and establishing estate plans
- Coordinating succession plan with wills, trusts, financial powers of attorney and other estate planning documents
- Preparing employment and compensation agreements
The counsel of an experienced business succession team like ours at Montgomery McCracken is crucial to seeing that these and other goals for your business are realized in the near and distant future.
Multiple generations of our clients have sought our counsel and relied on us for understanding and objectivity, our ability to analyze issues from close-up and from a distance and for our creative tailor-made solutions to the complex multidimensional issues of business succession planning.
Business Preservation and Protection
Because each business owner’s concerns are unique, we create plans that give our clients comfort knowing their business is prepared to adapt to change.
An attorney with sufficient expertise and experience is essential. Montgomery McCracken’s cross-disciplinary team helps with all aspects of a business transfer–income taxation, estate and gift taxations, estate planning, contract law, corporate and other entity governance, debtor and creditor law, asset protection, pension law, employment law and litigation.