Generational arbitrages, governance, tax structuring
A successful succession does not make noise. It generates no press release, appears in no ranking. It simply leaves, ten years later, a company that has continued to prosper, a family that still talks at the Christmas meal, and heirs who do not wonder why the eldest inherited more than the others.
These silent successions are rare. One in three family handovers fails or leaves lasting scars, and the cause is almost never the tax scheme. It is the lack of preparation, the dilution of intentions, the silence on uncomfortable subjects. Arcadia Partners advises founder-leaders and shareholding families over the long term, where a succession can still be built in depth, not endured in haste.
When Arcadia steps in
The situations we advise on look like these. A 62-year-old founder-leader who has been thinking for three years about handing over to their children, but has never managed to formalise who would do what, and time is passing. A family that discovers, on the death of the patriarch, that no one had prepared what came next, and that must recompose the shareholding in a short legal timeframe. Three sibling shareholders who do not share the same vision for the next twenty years of the company. A succession structured ten years ago, but that the company’s growth has made obsolete, and that needs to be reopened.
Our clients are often family companies valued between €2.5m and €20m enterprise value, across all sectors. We have a particular affinity for exceptional craft houses, sector-specific family businesses (food and beverage, luxury, niche industry), cultural and artistic heritages that pass through several generations.
Our method
The work begins with a complete diagnosis: current wealth and tax situation, governance in place, identification of heirs and their desired role, explicit or latent points of tension between family members. This diagnosis is confidential, and we generally meet each family member individually before the first joint meeting.
Then comes the structuring phase: tax devices (Dutreil pact, contribution-sale under 150-0 B ter, family holding, dismemberment of property), target governance (family council, supervisory board, shareholders agreement), liquidity tools for heirs who may want to exit later.
A family succession operation is never conducted alone. We systematically engage with teams of specialised tax lawyers, notaries and wealth engineers. When the family already works with historic advisors, we always prefer to collaborate with them: they know the company, they have the trust of shareholders, they carry part of the wealth memory that no mission of a few months can reconstitute. The Arcadia method, on these matters, is to merge into an existing ecosystem so as not to weaken what is already in place and essential.
When the situation involves intergenerational tensions, we activate our mediation practice. A succession is not just a tax scheme.
Engagement framework
Long-term advisory, two to five years in most cases. Time-based billing for diagnosis and structuring phases, fixed fee for execution phases. On these matters, we engage without an imposed agenda: as long as the succession is not complete, we stay alongside the family.
The best succession is the one prepared fifteen years in advance. The second best is the one that starts today.