CaseStudies

The founder had spent a little over twenty years building the business from a handful of employees into a regional operator. When a strategic buyer approached, heads of terms were agreed for a majority sale with a retained minority stake and a two-year earn-out. Almost everything the family owned sat inside the company. The founder knew the business in detail but had never held an investment portfolio of any size, and had not yet worked out how much the family actually needed, how much should remain exposed to risk, or how decisions would be made once the company was no longer the centre of everything.

• Wealth held almost entirely in one asset, with a final price that depended on completion timing and the earn-out.
• A transaction team – lawyers, tax counsel, the bank running the sale – each dealing with its own part of the deal, with nobody holding the family’s longer-term picture.
• No agreed view of what the proceeds were for, how quickly they should be invested, or against what objectives.
• A spouse and two adult children who had never been involved in financial decisions and were about to be directly affected by them.

1. Mapped the liquidity event. Before signing, Ellis Page worked through the expected proceeds line by line: the cash at completion, the retained stake, the earn-out and its conditions, and the amounts to be set aside for tax, lifestyle and a reserve. The founder saw, for the first time, what the family would actually hold at each stage rather than a single headline number.

2. Built a multi-year cash-flow plan. Ellis Page modelled the family’s spending, existing commitments and the reserve the founder wanted to keep untouched. This showed how much of the proceeds needed to stay in cash or near-cash, and how much was genuinely available for long-term investment.

3. Designed a staged diversification programme. Rather than investing everything on completion day, Ellis Page set out a programme that moved capital into a diversified portfolio in tranches over eighteen months. The pace reflected the family’s appetite for risk and the fact that a meaningful stake in the company remained on the balance sheet.

4. Integrated tax into the investment plan. Working with the founder’s tax advisers, Ellis Page sequenced the investment programme and chose vehicles and asset locations with the tax position already in view, rather than fixing them afterwards.

5. Set out the family’s governance. Ellis Page ran a series of meetings with the founder, spouse and children to agree, in plain language, what the wealth was for, who would take part in decisions, and how the children would be kept informed and prepared.

6. Acted as the single point of coordination. Throughout the transaction, Ellis Page kept the lawyers, tax counsel and the emerging investment plan working from one set of assumptions.

The family owned an operating business through a holding company, together with property, investment accounts and personal assets in two countries. Members of the second and third generations lived in different places, held different residencies and, in two cases, different citizenships. Each country had its own bankers, lawyers and accountants, each producing reports in its own format. When the senior generation asked for a straightforward statement of what the family owned and where it was held, no one could produce one.

• Reports arriving from banks, custodians and accountants in several countries, in different currencies and on different timetables.
• Holding structures established for sound reasons years earlier but never examined together.
• Succession documents drafted separately in each jurisdiction, with provisions that did not fit neatly together.
• Family members with very different levels of knowledge and involvement, and no shared understanding of how decisions were made.

1. Compiled a complete inventory. Ellis Page gathered every asset, entity and liability across all jurisdictions into a single register, and took on the role of coordinating adviser across the family’s existing professional relationships.

2. Consolidated the reporting. Ellis Page introduced one reporting format covering holdings, performance, currency exposure and liquidity across every country and account. Quarterly reports now reach every branch of the family in the same form.

3. Reviewed the structures with local advisers. Working with the family’s lawyers and tax advisers in each country, Ellis Page led a review of whether each structure still served its purpose. Two entities were identified as no longer needed and are being wound down; others were retained with clearer documentation of why they exist.

4. Aligned the succession plans. Ellis Page coordinated the redrafting of wills and related documents so that the arrangements in each country work together rather than against each other, with local counsel responsible for implementation.

5. Supported a family constitution. Over four meetings held across two cities, Ellis Page guided the family in producing a written constitution setting out its values, purpose, roles and decision-making rules.

6. Coordinated the fiduciaries. Where a foundation board and a trustee were involved, Ellis Page arranged a common reporting cycle and a standing agenda for their engagement with the family.

Over four decades, the principal had assembled a portfolio of residential and commercial buildings across Berlin, held through a series of companies and partnerships. The rental income was dependable and supported several households. Property made up the overwhelming majority of the family’s wealth. The principal had begun to think seriously about stepping back, but the three members of the next generation had very different levels of interest in running property, and the family had never written down how it made decisions or how ownership should pass.

• Concentration in a single asset class and a single city, with little liquidity.
• Income that several households relied upon, which made any change to the portfolio a sensitive matter.
• Multiple entities, each with its own accounts, lenders and advisers, and no consolidated picture.
• A succession question that was as much about roles and fairness within the family as it was about tax and legal structure.

1. Reviewed the portfolio in the context of total wealth. Ellis Page assessed concentration, income dependency, gearing and liquidity across the whole estate and set out options for building a complementary pool of liquid assets over time.

2. Prepared a liquidity plan. The plan identified how the family could meet foreseeable calls on cash – transfer taxes, capital works on older buildings and a potential buy-out of a family member – without being forced to sell buildings at an unfavourable moment.

3. Reorganised cash management. Ellis Page rationalised how rental income, reserves and distributions moved between the entities, so that cash is held efficiently and family members receive predictable payments on a fixed schedule.

4. Introduced consolidated reporting. The principal and the next generation now receive a single quarterly report covering valuations, income, debt, occupancy and cash across every entity.

5. Designed the governance. Ellis Page worked with the family to decide who sits on the property company board, how acquisitions and disposals are approved, and how those not actively involved are kept informed.

6. Led the succession discussions. Through a series of individual and joint meetings, Ellis Page helped the family distinguish between the one sibling who wanted to run the portfolio and the two who wanted an economic interest without operational responsibility.

7. Coordinated the accountants and lawyers. Ellis Page kept the family’s existing advisers aligned so that the structural and tax steps were carried out consistently across all entities.

The family had given generously for many years, but almost always in response to requests, with no shared view of what the giving was meant to achieve. The older generation wanted philanthropy to become a defining part of the family’s legacy. The younger generation wanted more rigour, clearer results and a genuine part in decisions. Everyone agreed on one thing: giving should not become a source of argument, and it should never put the capital the family relied upon at risk.

• No agreed purpose, focus or scale for the family’s giving.
• Charitable assets held informally, with no defined investment approach.
• Grant decisions made by individuals rather than through any shared process.
• Uncertainty about how much could be committed to philanthropy over time without affecting the family’s core capital.

1. Led the development of a philanthropic mission. Through a series of family workshops, Ellis Page guided the family to agree the causes, geographies and forms of giving it would concentrate on, and a realistic view of how much it would give each year over the coming decade.

2. Drafted an investment policy for charitable assets. Ellis Page set out objectives, risk tolerance, time horizon and values-based constraints for the charitable pool, so that it is managed with the same discipline as the family’s other assets.

3. Established grant-making governance. A grant committee drawn from three generations now works to written criteria and a review process. Proposals are assessed against the mission before any commitment is made.

4. Planned the legacy. With the family’s legal advisers, Ellis Page considered how the programme should continue beyond the current generation and how it fits within the family’s wider succession arrangements.

5. Arranged family education. Younger members completed sessions on philanthropy, governance and investment, preparing them to take on responsibility over time.

6. Set up reporting and administration. Ellis Page coordinates annual reporting on charitable assets, grants made and progress against the family’s stated goals, and supports the administrative work behind the programme.