Our latest insights

The term “Family Office” is often misunderstood, so what does it mean? What does it specifically mean to your family and why is it important? Family Office places structure around your investments for the future and ensures that you are asked to consider the important questions.

A family trust can often be the right vehicle to carry on your family business and manage family wealth. However, careful consideration needs to be given to how the trust is established and administered to ensure that the ultimate control of your income and assets rests in the right hands and is in line with your family strategy. Much time is often spent deciding on who will be the trustee and the beneficiaries of the trust, however the issue of who should be the appointor can often be overlooked.

Conflict in family businesses – in fact, all businesses – is a reality of any workplace. Understanding the source of a conflict, and where tension triggers exist, can help businesses pre-empt, spot and manage clashes and turn these differences into positives.

Whether you’re eyeing off the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) role in your current organisation or elsewhere, the intel from CEO, CFO and industry surveys suggests the path from financial controller to CFO is more of a zigzag than a straight line. So what skillsets are organisations looking for in a modern CFO, and do you have them? We’ve put together some advice to take you from CFO-in-waiting to the top job.

Correctly adopting a sustainable element as part of a supply chain leads to environmental, customer, cultural and community benefits. It also enables family businesses to see significant, long-term financial savings and influences the succession plan for their business.

Family businesses with plans are more likely to thrive. Having a solid plan the whole family helps to develop and evolve not only means businesses are more robust in the present, but also in a solid and sure position for future growth and opportunities.

Whether you’ve just secured the coveted role of Chief Financial Officer (CFO) or you’re on the cusp of becoming one, one thing’s for sure: you’re embarking on a high-stakes, high pressure role.

Hearing the words ‘Division 7A’ is often accompanied with a twinge of anxiety – and for good reason. This area of tax legislation is incredibly complex, and for family businesses, Division 7A can be a particularly difficult concept to navigate.

When families come into large sums of money – typically from the sale of a business or property – the question often arises: ‘Do I gift this money now to my family or do I wait and include it in my estate?’

Working with our family business clients, we have seen some businesses misunderstand the purpose of, or underutilise, the director appointed as Chair, and therefore miss the opportunities, skills and perspectives this role can bring.

‘We have always done it that way.’ The seven most expensive words in a business, remarked Janine Allis from Boost Juice at the recent Family Business Australia conference.

While conflict happens, how you manage it can be the difference between a business (and family) that thrives, and one that becomes destabilised.