Setting up your family business correctly allows you to hit the ground running and prevent major issues from popping up down the road. To that end, DWT's Family Business Resource Center is running a series of articles to...more
Families are all about loyalty, mutual support, and unconditional love, right? That's certainly the ideal that many families try to achieve, even if they operate a business together. With that said, the interpersonal dynamics...more
This is the eighth article in our series on selling the family business. Our previous articles include advance planning, preliminary diligence, marketing, letters of intent, indemnification provisions, backstopping the deal,...more
This is the third article in our series on selling the family business. See our previous article on conducting preliminary diligence for a refresher on one of the most important things a family business can do to improve its...more
Family-owned businesses come in all shapes and sizes and cover a spectrum of industries. They share all the same concerns as non-family businesses: profitability, responses to competition, adoption and adaptation to new...more
Part III of our series on Shakespeare and Family-Owned Businesses takes us back to a familiar theme: managing succession in ownership and leadership in family-owned businesses. ...more
For fans of Shakespeare, our blog is taking a literary bent again. Our first Shakespeare post related the lessons from King Lear. Now we turn to Hamlet. We all know that one of the biggest struggles of a family business is...more
One of the biggest struggles of a family business is surviving succession. According to Lloyd Steier, Professor in the Department of Strategic Management and Organization at the University of Alberta School of Business and...more
You’ve gone through the motions of succession planning—groomed your successor, established and executed all the attorney-advised documents—and now you’re prepared to hand off your business, right? Not necessarily....more
Just as a normal family strives to provide funding for opportunities, a family business should consider establishing funds as reserves for particular purposes. According to Ramez A. Baasiri, author of Interrupted...more
Most family business owners might live their entire lives without running into securities law issues or problems. Many probably believe that there is an automatic exemption applicable to a family business from the...more
Family businesses are increasingly encouraging women. Of family businesses surveyed, almost 60 percent have women in top management positions and over 30 percent list a female as the next successor. These important statistics...more
There are a multitude of ways to realize ownership transition–some simple, some complex, some a safe bet and some full of risks. For the ambitious, successful family-owned company that wants to make it to the big leagues, an...more
The award-winning TV sitcom Arrested Development, now in re-runs on Netflix, was premised on the rise (and mostly fall) of an American family business, the Bluth Company, owned by a comically dysfunctional family.
Engaged...more
We’ve all heard the chatter (or read about it in this blog). The owners of family businesses need to start thinking about their exit strategy. To put it in perspective, Robert Nason of John Molson School of Business reveals...more
Recently we published a post in our blog about succession and the steps necessary to see it through. Having an open, honest, and transparent discourse with family members is one such step. Yet, this is often more easily said...more
Let’s say you have a thriving family business that you have built through your own hard efforts during your lifetime. You are raising your minor child to see the value of the business and to be entrepreneurial, and you want...more
Family-owned businesses that have independent board members are frequently among the best-managed and best-governed. They have reached a level of maturity where family members recognize that outside voices provide stability,...more
We have represented hundreds of family businesses (as well as other privately-held businesses) in negotiating and completing successful mergers and acquisitions. We have seen important lessons learned by families selling...more
In June of this year, Davis Wright Tremaine LLP hosted its fourth annual Farm to Label summit in Portland, Oregon. One of the programs of the day was a panel mediated by DWT’s Drew Steen on the role of a non-family member...more
Big family business conglomerates can get into big trouble when impacted by negative global market forces. That’s the story of Hanjin Shipping Co., a family-owned Korean shipping company (and part of a large Korean chaebol,...more
Family-owned businesses, like other privately held businesses, are typically formed as corporations or limited liability companies (LLCs). They issue shares or LLC interests representing equity ownership. These equity...more
In his recently published book, Perfect your Exit Strategy: Seven Steps to Maximum Value, Seattle investment banker Thomas Metz highlights what he sees as the top ten mistakes made by sellers of businesses. Family-owned...more
Here’s a common scenario: Parents successfully develop a business. Then their children get involved in the business – but maybe not all of the children. Then comes the challenge: One of the offspring works at the business and...more
In September, Gary Locke, former U.S. Ambassador to China, Secretary of Commerce and two-term Governor of the State of Washington, returned to Davis Wright Tremaine as a Senior Advisor. Ambassador Locke’s return sparked a...more