Family Business

As a family business, you face a special challenge: you must find a strategy that meets your business ambitions and that fits your family's standards and values. We can help you in this.

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As PwC takes a comprehensive view of family businesses, we are able to align effectively with your goals as an entrepreneur and with those of your enterprise. Whether the issue at hand is about succession or ownership, as a family business you face a special challenge. You need to find a strategy that satisfies your business ambitions but which is also aligned with the norms and values of your family. This is where we can help. We can also be of service in the area of digitisation, providing you with stability for the future. PwC has a unique partnership with the Tilburg Institute for Family Business (TiFB). This is a multidisciplinary institute that focuses on the dynamics of family businesses. The TiFB conducts research and provides education within the broad themes of family businesses, with theory and practice reinforcing one another. Want to find out more about PwC can mean for you? If so, please contact us.

Our comprehensive approach

At PwC, we follow an integrated approach for the family business based on the Owner’s Agenda (see the adjoining illustration). This approach is based on the connectedness between the family and the company. A family business can only be provided with optimal advice if the advisor understands the role of the family, and the family can only be optimally advised if the advisor grasps the role of the business. Whether the advice is about themes such as growth, financing, risks or governance, PwC understands your concerns and would be happy to be of service. See below for a step-by-step explanation of the illustration.

Owners & families

People must be familiar with their roles and dare to take responsibility if they want to be associates in family businesses.

Only qualified and well informed associates can be effective (co-) entrepreneurs. Successful business families agree upon roles and decision-making powers and determine which family members can and must take care of particular tasks.

Values & objectives

Long-term thinking, respect, integrity, neutrality, affinity with the location and responsibility towards the family, employees and their region: these values and principles characterise successful family businesses. But they are not platitudes; they require all members of business families to agree common objectives, acknowledge them and behave accordingly. This also applies when it comes to selecting new locations.

Owner business model

A sustainable business policy is essential for the future and independence of family businesses.

This requires acceptance and understanding from the owning family about the level of future revenues, as well as expected inflows and outflows of capital. Successful business families are prepared to sacrifice personal benefits in order to finance growth or important investments.

Corporate Governance

Successful family businesses arrange and establish their management and control structures; this involves deciding under which circumstances, and in which positions, family members can work in the family business. They reach agreement about remuneration and know what must be done when it comes to external management.

Family Governance

In order to responsibly run family businesses when the number of associates is changing or growing, and to pass on the company to the next generation, the interests and values of families must be retained, and the sense of unity and identification with the business must be reinforced and consolidated in the long-term.

Roles & people

Family members can decide to perform various tasks in or for family businesses, can work for the company or manage the family's assets in a family office. The various roles must be defined and filled while considering the suitability and interests of family members.

Financing growth

Family businesses tend to finance growth using their own cash flow rather than credit. However, sufficient financing must be available at all times.

Alternative types of funding allow financing to be built up for various functions, to safeguard the independence of family businesses and to ensure the family's participatory rights in its stake.

Managing growth risks

Complexity and transparency require professional structures so laws and regulations can be adhered to.

Successful family businesses have a single system, which transparently displays information, clearly assigns responsibilities and has a flexible framework, so compliance structures can be modified to suit new situations without too much hassle.

Managing growth risks

Complexity and transparency require professional structures so laws and regulations can be adhered to.

Organic growth

Your family business must be stable, independent and future-proof when you decide to pass it on to the next generation. Is growth at all costs the answer? New products and services? Or new markets?

Whatever it is, changes in the business model, as well as digitalisation, are important factors in the long-term success of your company. And this normally means the organisation and personnel structures need to be modified.

Inorganic growth

Acquisitions are important in order to obtain critical skills not already possessed by the company and to combat negative developments. But they are also accompanied by risks.

New parts of the company must be quickly integrated in order to benefit from essential synergies. In addition, certain sections of the company, which have been part of the company for a while but do not deal with the core activities, must be closed and sales procedures must be concluded effectively.

Managing growth

How do you earn your money? With correct figures about commercial management, informative reports that address various dimensions and a clear performance system that helps to manage the business in the long-term and to create transparency in uncertain surroundings.

And good reports help to convince the family that appropriate steps are being taken.