Adams + Miles
By Tony Sokic
July 24th, 2023
Business succession: Do your kids really want to take over the family company?
Looking to transition your business to the next generation so you can enjoy retirement, or simply because you’ve decided that it’s time to hang up the entrepreneurial reins? You may want to take some lessons from the popular HBO series Succession to ensure things don’t go seriously awry, creating irreparable family rifts—and even loss of business opportunity and wealth. Because as so many entrepreneurs have learned the hard way, simply having adult children or relatives that could potentially run the family business is no guarantee that the transition will go smoothly. Developing an effective business succession strategy requires far more than family lineage and a founder’s dream of creating a multi-generational corporate legacy.
According to a recent Globe and Mail analysis, in the coming decade Canada will experience the generational transfer of about six in 10 family businesses.
Many founders envision their children one day assuming control of the enterprise that made them wealthy, shaped their character and contributed to their success. The challenge is that just as many potential successors aren’t groomed for the task. They can often be ill-qualified, ill-prepared or lack interest in running the family enterprise.
