Family businesses are different from other businesses. Besides unique estate tax, succession and governance issues, family businesses must also deal effectively with past, present and future family members, family values and the inevitable family...
On Oct. 26, 2009, Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Douglas Shulman, speaking at the annual meeting of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), announced the IRS' creation of a new audit unit, the Global High Wealth Unit...
Selling a family business is typically complicated and fraught with emotional issues for the owner. The owner is selling his means of livelihood, and more the composition of his net worth, which will migrate from business earnings to a portfolio...
For those of us in the business of providing client services, success is heavily dependent on our ability to offer the most comprehensive, cutting-edge information available. No matter how good we may be individually, we can always be better by...
Leo Tolstoy begins Anna Karenina with the line: Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Much the same can be said for successful multi-generational family businesses as well as family businesses that are...
Jan. 1, 2010 marked a day that most trusts-and-estates practitioners never thought they would see and one they had repeatedly told their clients would never come. On that day, the door opened for the heirs of some of the wealthiest individuals in...
PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (PWC) has released its second global family business survey in November 2010, Kin in the Game, available online at www.pwc.com. In 2007, when PWC completed its first survey, there were few signs of the financial crisis...
Rumors of the demise of the small family office have been greatly exaggerated. Although many wealthy families have changed the way their offices operate, smaller single family offices are demonstrating remarkable resilience in the face of economic...
Waiting for Godot is a classic play in which the protagonists await the arrival of a mysterious problem solver who never arrives. For estate planners and valuation professionals, 2010 was similarly a time for waiting for tax law resolutions, for...
