Private client
Governance for families who now own an institution, not a business
By the fourth generation, most shareholders have never worked in the company. The governing documents usually assume the opposite.
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Practice Area
By the fourth generation, a family business has more shareholders than employees who are family. That is the problem we are usually asked to solve.
Practice contacts
We advise families, family offices, and closely held businesses on succession, ownership structure, and the governance arrangements that determine how decisions are made once the founder is no longer available to make them.
The legal structure is the easier half of the work. The harder half is a governance arrangement the family will actually follow — a shareholders' council that meets, an information policy that is honored, a dispute procedure used before relationships break rather than after. We decline engagements where a family is unwilling to spend time on that half, because the documents do not hold without it.
We also advise private foundations and family philanthropic vehicles on governance, grantmaking policy, and investment oversight.
Capabilities
Transfer of ownership and control between generations, including the tax and structuring analysis and the sequencing across several years.
Family constitutions, shareholders' councils, information rights, and dispute procedures designed to be used.
Domestic and cross-border structures for holding operating businesses and long-term family assets.
Redemption mechanisms, valuation methodology, and negotiated exits for shareholders who no longer wish to remain.
Formation and governance of private foundations, grantmaking policy, and investment oversight.
The team
Industries
Manufacturers, distributors, and consumer businesses, many of them family-controlled.
Universities, foundations, cultural institutions, and the investment offices that support them.
Banks, asset managers, insurers, and the payments businesses now regulated like all three.
Speak to the firm
Describe the matter in general terms and name the parties involved. We run a conflicts check, usually within two business days, and a partner in the relevant practice will call you. The first conversation is not charged.