Assurance, tax and advisory services tailored to you and your private business
Family businesses
Your vision. Our dedication
Ownership is bigger than just the business. It’s responsibility. It’s sacrifice. It’s your legacy. We are dedicated to helping you maximise your vision. Drawing on our global network of tech-powered experts, we’re here to help with every stage of your journey from managing priorities, to nurturing growth and planning for exit. Let’s take care of business, together.
Five key business priorities for private company owners in
Business, made personal
Throughout our history, private businesses have always been a priority for PwC. In fact, we’ve been working with companies like yours for over 175 years. Helping them grow, strengthen and when and if the time is right sell. We know business can be personal. So we’ll help you turn your opportunities into impact. And your ambition into success.
By your side, today, tomorrow
As the needs of your private business change, our support adapts. Through a global team of trusted advisers and tech-powered specialists, we’re ready to move on any challenge and help you maximise every opportunity. Dedicated, responsive, proactive we’re here for you today, and ready for your future.
Connections that count
The right markets. The ideal connections. The best technologies. We know where to look to find the catalysts your business needs. Reaching across our global communities, we’ll connect you with people that can help you achieve your goals and scale your business.
The Owner's Agenda for your family business
At PwC, we focus on what matters most to you and your business. Our approach, The Owner’s Agenda, helps you develop your ownership and business strategy together in a consistent way. You are at the centre, and your agenda brings both together.
Wherever you are in your business journey, we stand alongside you. We translate our insights into practical guidance, helping you move forward and succeed. Together, we identify new opportunities and shape the future direction of your business. Everything we do is tailored to you.
We also look at the questions that make a difference today and tomorrow. Think of succession planning, sustainability, artificial intelligence, the labour market and cybersecurity. What impact do these developments have on your business? Which risks need to be managed? And where are the opportunities to accelerate and create value?
What sets us apart
We take the time to understand your agenda, so we gain a clear view of how you want to grow and develop your business. We then bring together a team that fits your needs and supports your organisation in moving forward.
And we go further. Each year, we study thousands of family businesses and speak with hundreds of CEOs of private companies. This helps us understand the choices entrepreneurs make and what drives them. We translate these insights into concrete actions, enabling you to better anticipate change and move forward with confidence.
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.
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.
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.
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Want to talk further with one of our experts about the opportunities surrounding family businesses?
Contact us
Tax partner en Family Business Leader, PwC Netherlands
Tel: +31 (0)62 295 34 75
Assurance Partner, Private Business Leader en regioleider NoordWest, PwC Netherlands
Tel: +31 (0)62 054 96 10