CFB hosts a workshop on smart and successful transfer of family business and wealth

The Centre for Family Business hosted the last of its 2014 family business seminars on the 19th November. Almost 50 family businesses from across the country attended the seminar entitled ‘The Family Business: preserving and transferring wealth’, held in the DCU Ryan Academy.

Mr Vincent Carton, Managing director of Manor Farm spoke candidly about his eighth generation family-operated poultry company.  In particular, he discussed the means of professionalising the family business such as drawing up a charter.

Mr Tim Lynch, tax director with KPMG spoke of family business taxation in his presentation ‘Smart and successful transfer of your family business’.  

The second half of the event was an interactive workshop facilitated by Professor Finian Buckley of DCU Business School. Commenting on the importance of family business seminars, Prof Buckley said:

‘One of the reasons is to get people who share similar experiences together in a room to understand that they can learn from each other. That what’s happening in one family business is probably happening in every family business.’

‘Then to hear others who are dealing with problems that they’re facing currently,  but they’ve solved them and the ways they’ve solved them I think will motivate some of the attendees here to go and have deeper conversations about issues that are going to help them grow and develop.’

Of the family businesses present was the Silken Thomas Group, established over 30 years ago. Owner, Joe Flanagan spoke of his motivations for attending the event:

‘It’s just about looking at handing on the business in the fairest manner you can and also then looking at the tax implications and how is the best way to do it. There are two aspects to it — the sort of human aspect of handing it down and looking at your sons and daughters and also then the best way to do it tax wise.  That’s generally what we’d hope to get out of this today.’

The first of next year’s events is a Family Business conference which will take place in February/March 2015. The topic for 2015 will focus on professionalising family business and succession planning.