For business owners considering passing their businesses on to a successor. If any of your clients own a business and are wistfully eyeing the day when they can hand it off and start taking it easy, you may want to nudge them toward law firm Saul Ewing’s newly launched Business Succession Program.

The idea was born of the number of requests for succession-planning Saul Ewing has been receiving in recent years, according to Robert Louis, who chairs the six-phase program for the Philadelphia-based firm. “We have a large client base of middle-market to large family businesses,” he says. And as many of these baby-boom business owners reach 25- to 30-year mark as entrepreneurs “we’re seeing a significant increase in business-succession planning.”

Time out 

The program focuses on family owned companies, which comprise 90% of all U.S. businesses. One alarming statistic from the Small Business Administration says that less that a third of family businesses survive the transition from first to second generation ownership. 

The process of seeking an answer to the seemingly simple question, “How can I retire,” can be surprising to many business owners, says Louis. For one thing many business owners have no clue how much value they’ve built up over decades of hard work. Additionally, they’re sometimes taken aback to discover that selling or otherwise handing off a business often leads directly to tax and estate planning as well as elements of psychology and family dynamics.

“People who build successful businesses have invested an enormous amount of blood, sweat and tears into their businesses, and it can be incredibly difficult to relinquish control,” says Louis. The Business Succession Program will “treat business succession, retirement, estate and trust planning as an integrated process and create customized succession plans for clients.”

But Louis adds that Saul Ewing doesn’t broker business sales, nor does it have a bias toward in-family succession. In other words, if its analysis indicates that a chosen successor may diminish a business’ value, the firm will try to help the family see the potential advantages of other courses, including a sale to outsiders.

“People who own these businesses are often very bright; extremely knowledgeable about what they do,” says Louis. “They just need guidance when it comes to succession planning.”

Saul Ewing has 260 lawyers in eight offices in Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey, Delaware, and the District of Columbia. It serves businesses in the U.S. and abroad, “including recognizable names in corporate America, exciting start-ups and an array of closely held and privately held companies,” according to the firm. –FWR

.