Leveraging Private Companies to Accelerate Owner Liquidity and Returns

Leveraged Dividend Recapitalizations and Leveraged Share Repurchases

Now is an excellent time for closely held and family business boards to consider engaging in leveraged transactions to enhance shareholder liquidity and accelerate shareholder returns. The Biden Administration has not yet increased corporate or personal tax rates and interest rates are still low. Banks are seeking quality loans and your leveraged transaction might fit their bill. And perhaps your shareholders desire some liquidity from their ownership, even if you are not ready to don’t desire to sell your company.

In this post, two corporate finance tools available to owners of closely held and family businesses are discussed at length: Leveraged Dividend Recapitalizations and Leveraged Share Repurchases. These tools can be used to create liquidity outside the ownership of private businesses or interests in them.

Your Company Has a Dividend Policy

Dividend Policy. Every company has one. The question is, is it a good one in terms of meeting the needs of your company’s owners? This post explains the concept of Net Operating Cash Flow (NOCF) (after-tax), which is the source for debt repayment, for working capital for growth, for replacement capex, and for growth capex. It is also the source for economic distributions to owners. Whatever your board decides about the uses of NOCF, your dividend policy is either consciously made or it is residual in nature.

When Is Our Next Turning Point Breakfast?

Is Your Closely Held or Family Business at a Turning Point and Do You Need to Talk?

Turning Point Sign

In this post, I discuss a very important breakfast I had some time ago with a client and friend of many years who is second generation chairman, CEO, and lead family member of a very successful, third-generation family business. That breakfast served as a turning point for him and his business and the family.

Do Business Owners “Know” the Value of Their Businesses?

Dangers of Thinking of a "Walk-Away Number" as the Value

Do business owners “know” the values of their businesses? And do they need help if and when they think about selling, either unexpectedly or as part of a plan? I answer these questions in this week’s post.

Dividend Policy Is Part of Corporate Finance for Private Companies

Business owners are faced with three universal questions as they run their businesses. These questions are addressed by every business every year, one way or the other, directly or indirectly, consciously or unconsciously. This post addresses these three questions.

Interim Time

Recognizing This Important Concept Can Be Key to a Successful Life

What are you doing today to be sure you are ready to spend the time after you retire or sell your business, i.e., the rest of your life, in the style you desire with the resources needed to take care of you and your family and any other charitable desires you may have?  This post […]

Corporate Finance in 30 Minutes

For Private Company Owners and Directors

Mercer Capital’s Travis Harms wrote a series of four whitepapers under the umbrella of Corporate Finance in 30 Minutes. In this series of white papers, Travis makes something that can sound arcane and difficult, like corporate finance, accessible for business owners and advisers. The first paper is an introduction to corporate finance for private businesses and introduces the three key questions of corporate finance that owners of private businesses face. The subsequent whitepapers address these key questions.

Where is the Boom in Business Sales by Aging Business Owners?

Are You Ready for Sale Anyhow?

More than a decade ago, Richard Jackim and Peter Christman wrote a book called The $10 Trillion Opportunity. In the book, the authors forecasted massive future sales of private businesses because of the aging of baby boomer business owners. They were right in that there were millions of aging business owners. However, they were early in their prediction of a tsunami of private company sales by those baby boomer owners. Now, more than ever, business owners should be preparing themselves, and their businesses, for the next transaction wave.

Interim Time: The Time Between Now and a Future Sale of a Business

Use Interim Time Wisely to Prepare Businesses and Owners for Ultimate Sale

Is business ownership a binary thing? Do we either own our businesses or not? The binary notion leads business owners to think either in terms of the status quo or of an eventual sale of the business. The truth is that between the two bookends of status quo and an eventual third-party sale are many possibilities for creating shareholder liquidity and diversification and facilitating both ownership and management transition

Thinking About Selling Your Business? Don’t Wait to Fix Your Buy-Sell Agreement

The story in this post represents a composite from recent discussions with clients revolving around the question – “If a sale in the foreseeable future is a possibility, should you bother to be sure that your buy-sell agreement is in good working order?”