Corporate Finance & Planning Insights for Multi-Generational Family Businesses
Family Business Director was in sunny Tampa last week at the spring edition of the Transitions Conference produced by Family Business Magazine. The sessions offered fresh insights on perennial challenges around succession planning, conflict management, and communication. But the recurring – if not underlying – theme that impressed us was the challenge of shareholder engagement.
The meaning of a family business is a function of both family and business characteristics. In turn, it influences the dividend policy, investing, and financing decisions of the company. In this week’s post, we will identify the four potential meanings and correlate family & business characteristics with those meanings.
The 2019 Transitions Spring Conference will be held next week, April 3-5, in Tampa Bay, Florida. Travis Harms, senior vice president and leader of Mercer Capital’s Family Business Advisory practice, will be attending the conference.
This post is the third of four installments from our Basics of Financial Statement Analysis whitepaper. In this series of posts, our goal is to help readers develop an understanding of the basic contours of the three principal financial statements. The balance sheet, income statement, and statement of cash flows are each indispensable components of the “story” that the financial statements tell about a company. This week, we focus on the statement of cash flows.
From time to time, Family Business Director will interview family business leaders or experienced advisors to get their perspective on important questions common to family businesses. In this first installment, we talk with Dan Hatzenbuehler, the retired Chairman and CEO of E. Ritter & Company. Dan offers great insight that we know our readers will profit from.
The ongoing drama surrounding the behavior of Papa John’s founder John Schnatter has been a mainstay of the financial press over the past fifteen months. So what is the takeaway for family business directors from the Papa John’s saga? The most important lesson is this: the bad actions of family shareholders can have significant financial repercussions for the family business, and by extension, all the family shareholders.
This post is the second of four installments from our Basics of Financial Statement Analysis whitepaper. In this series of posts, our goal is to help readers develop an understanding of the basic contours of the three principal financial statements. The balance sheet, income statement, and statement of cash flows are each indispensable components of the “story” that the financial statements tell about a company. This week, we focus on the income statement.
The good news – or maybe it’s the bad news, depending on your perspective – is that overly optimistic projections are not necessarily the result of intentional errors on the part of your family business managers. Rather, behavioral economists tell us that humans are prone to overconfidence as a result of what they refer to as cognitive biases. In this post, we address five cognitive biases contributing to overly optimistic forecasts.
The biggest threat to the sustainability of your family business may not come from competition or evolving technologies. It may come from the family itself. As a family business director, you should be attuned to this risk and take the steps necessary to help prevent, or at least de-escalate such situations. In this week’s post, we suggest a few paths forward.
This post is the first of four installments from our Basics of Financial Statement Analysis whitepaper. In this series of posts, our goal is to help readers develop an understanding of the basic contours of the three principal financial statements. The balance sheet, income statement, and statement of cash flows are each indispensable components of the “story” that the financial statements tell about a company. This week, we focus on the balance sheet.
