Business owners

How we can help

We can work with you and your other advisers to:

• advise owner managers on the right structure for corporate governance documents, like articles and shareholders’ agreements, to govern and protect your business and minimise the impact of risks posed by life events such as death and divorce
• help with succession planning and business cohesion (including securing the interests of non-director shareholders) through introducing agreements like family charters
• offer advice on the sale of a business, including opportunities to combine it with personal succession planning (both pre and post sale)
• advise you on the options and implications of passing on your business interests, both by gifting during lifetime and on death by creating flexible, tax efficient wills
• review your arrangements to maximise the benefit of any tax reliefs available, including business property relief from inheritance tax
• combine advice to business owners (including specialist structures such as family investment companies) with in-depth knowledge on how they interact with family trusts

Our experience

Our previous work in this area includes:

• helping a client decide on the best way to transfer control of his £50 million turnover business to his employees while keeping an income stream for family members
• working with a client’s other advisers to sell a controlling interest in their company, involving giving personal tax advice both before and after the sale, and protecting the family’s interests while still meeting commercial goals
• helping a family sell a business owned through a series of family trusts, then reinvesting their wealth in a protected and tax efficient way for future generations
• creating innovative structures to help transfer a business from one generation to the next, using a combination of trust and corporate vehicles.

Our lawyers

Our lawyers specialise in lots of different areas of the law. We’ll bring all this knowledge together to give you the most up to date advice, tailored to your circumstances.

Who do we work with?

We’ve advised private clients with combined assets of well over £3billion, and we work with business owners from a wide range of sectors including sport, media, business and investment. Here are just a few examples:

• the owners of a manufacturing business with global operations in the UK
• a first-generation tech entrepreneur in the early stages of creating dynastic family wealth
• a UK resident non-domiciled family with very large property investment holdings