As a rule, each family-owned business has its own unique requirements. These are shaped by family members and their personal responsibility towards their employees, as well as the structure and history of the business. Our interdisciplinary approach – with experts in tax and business law, succession, asset planning and valuation working closely together – is especially advantageous in this field.
Many prominent family-owned businesses in Germany and abroad are long-standing clients of ours. We advise and support family-owned businesses of all sizes and legal forms.
Our expertise for family-owned businesses:
- Comprehensive ongoing tax advice, including tax compliance and all one-off matters
- Tax audits
- General corporate-law advice
- Structuring and reorganization of family-owned businesses
- Sale and purchase of family-owned businesses, and joint ventures
- Implementing supervisory-board, advisory-board and other corporate governance structures
- Family governance for business families
- Estate administration and advice for members of advisory and supervisory boards
- Advice on litigation and out-of-court settlements, and representation in shareholder disputes and arbitration
- Domestic and cross-border wealth planning and succession planning
- Advice on establishing and managing family offices
- Expatriation and immigration planning
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Our services for family-owned businesses
We provide ongoing advice to family-owned businesses in all legal and tax matters relating to operations and strategic alignment. We build and optimize organizational and legal structures, assist with complex restructuring programs, and advise on company acquisitions and sales, mergers, and the founding of joint ventures.
We also specialize in implementing supervisory-board, advisory-board and other corporate governance structures, and in restructuring shareholder groups. In cases of conflict, we represent the interests of family-owned businesses and their shareholders both in and out of court. Additionally, we are regularly called on for support with tax audits.
Flick Gocke Schaumburg is a leading firm in Germany for business taxation and succession planning and structuring for businesses and entrepreneurs.
Flick Gocke Schaumburg is a leading firm in Germany for business taxation and succession planning and structuring for businesses and entrepreneurs.
Apart from offering advice to business families on tax and wealth matters, we regularly draft family governance rules. We produce corporate constitutions, structured to avoid conflicts, as a constituent of active succession planning. If disputes arise nonetheless, we represent business families before public courts and arbitration tribunals, and in mediation proceedings.
More on structuring advice for family-owned businesses and private clients
International aspects, including planning for relocating to or from Germany, account for a large portion of the work we undertake for family-owned businesses. Where an enterprise wishes to invest or transfer a portion of its operating business abroad, we support family entrepreneurs in all aspects of tax and corporate law and, if necessary, consult the relevant experts at our partner firms abroad.
We likewise assist family members who are moving abroad or plan to marry a foreign national. Such cases give rise to many issues relating to international private law, income tax law and inheritance tax law, which we resolve quickly and comprehensively.
More on national and international tax law, tax law compliance
Family offices are steadily gaining in significance as an asset management model.
In transactions, family-owned businesses benefit from our interdisciplinary approach. Our tax law and corporate law advisors work closely with experts in antitrust law, labor and employment law, real estate law, and business valuation.
In the run-up to a company sale, we support clients with building the right sales structure, ensuring the correct timing of the succession and sale, and the subsequent sale of the family-owned business.
We also provide comprehensive advice from a single source on later steps such as partitioning family branches or dividing the family-owned business among shareholders.