Solutions for your entire business cycle

Whether you are looking to exit now or simply gauge your readiness, knowing who to work with in your important periods of business transaction and transition can make all the difference. Our team offers a methodical planning process to assess your situation, uncover unforeseen challenges and provide insight that helps empower educated financial decisions.

Should I strive to grow my business, transition it or sell it outright?

The proper life cycle planning strategy depends on timing within your company’s life cycle. We’ll work with you to understand your company’s financing, capital structure, product development and long-term strategic plan so that we can help you determine how best to move forward.

Expanding
To start your planning, we can help you understand the risks and opportunities of expanding your business.

Assessing attractiveness and readiness
Understanding the value of your business, its current condition to a potential buyer and your own readiness to exit are essential steps in the transition process.

Customized lending
To help gain pre-sale liquidity, we can offer solutions through our extensive boutique Investment Bank network. This may include leveraging your restricted shares in support of securities-backed loans, mortgages and tailored financing.

UBS Investor Watch, 1Q 2018, Who’s the boss?

Have you prepared your estate for your business sale liquidity event, and have you considered the people most important to you?

Succession planning
We can work with CPAs and attorneys to help create customized cash flow models comparing the economic benefits of various succession scenarios. We’ll look at tax-efficient ways to exercise stock options.

Selling your business
Our process offers detailed cash flow modeling, clearly illustrating what it would look like to sell to a strategic buyer, sell to a financial buyer, utilize a dividend recap or sell to an ESOP.

Tax strategies
Working with your tax professionals, we help you develop tax-efficient strategies for exiting your business, reducing estate tax exposure, preserving assets and transitioning wealth to future generations.

UBS Investor Watch, 1Q 2018, Who’s the boss?

Have you explored the right ways to support your legacy and giving needs, before or after the sale of your business?

Your post-exit plan
We can help you develop a tailored plan to transition from a K-1 distribution or salary to living comfortably off your investment income.

Personalized portfolio management
Post-exit, we manage your capital in an endowment-like fashion, matching cash flow needs with your long-term goals. We’ll design and execute customized investment strategies based on your plan.

Legacy and philanthropic planning
We have the experience and the network to help with protecting your assets, reducing estate tax exposure and transitioning wealth to future generations.

UBS Investor Watch, 1Q 2018, Who’s the boss?

The value of our advice

Pre-sale planning helps create a successful transition

The situation
We met our two clients, a Founder and President, just two years into their company’s existence. They introduced us to other key stakeholders, both relatives and employees, who also became clients in short order. Together, our clients owned approximately 40% of the company.

For each client, financial and estate planning was virtually non-existent prior to meeting our team. Their company was quickly becoming a major player in its space, and they were fielding unsolicited offers to acquire it. A sizable exit, in due time, was the likely outcome.

The strategy
Our end-to-end process and ongoing relationship focused on providing comprehensive guidance from the beginning stages of the company with $250k revenue, to five years later when it hit $100M in revenue, to the point at which they were ready to sell for close to $1 billion. As we approached our clients’ liquidity event, we needed to work diligently with them to: 1) provide education on pre-liquidity estate planning strategies so that their longterm objectives were tax-efficiently addressed in estate planning documents; 2) plan for cash flow needs through their exit; and 3) address potential risks.

Because we have experience working with many entrepreneurs through the sale of their businesses, and we have forged the appropriate relationships inside and outside of UBS, we were able to help ensure that clients optimized their exit. After various individual meetings with each client, we began to execute on a prioritized road map of deliverables, some known upfront and others that materialized along the way.

The result
When the day arrived, our clients sold their company with all of their “i’s” dotted and “t’s” crossed. They felt confident that they had maximized the event. With a successful sale, one client is now a key senior executive for the acquirer. Another is working with UBS to explore the potential of establishing a family office for the benefit of all family members.

Optimizing an exit

A road map of deliverables

30 months prior to sale

Estate planning

We introduced our clients to the head of UBS‘s Advanced Planning group in Texas. Together, we discussed estate planning disciplines essential to key stakeholders in their situation. We created a Strategic Wealth Assessment that provided an overview of their current estate plan, if any, and a go-forward strategy. Subsequently, we introduced our clients to an estate attorney to draft and execute basic estate documents, including wills, powers of attorney and medical directives. Most importantly, we offered advanced planning guidance to help address tax efficiency and asset preservation.

Trustee introduction

We introduced our clients to our Corporate Trust Network for inclusion in respective estate plan documents. Different trust companies were chosen per clients‘ individual needs.

Insurance review

We recommended a higher personal liability umbrella policy to align insurance coverage with a growing company value. We also recommended the purchase of an economical term insurance policy in light of an illiquid estate pre-sale.

18 - 24 prior to sale

Consolidation

We helped streamline our clients’ finances by opening UBS accounts, helping to manage cash flow per client needs, and setting budgets based on our extensive financial planning. We provided access to UBS’s competitive banking and lending services.

12 months prior to sale

Taxes

We connected clients with a CPA experienced in working with families of substantial means.

Philanthropy

Each client wished to explore charitable strategies. Working collaboratively with our UBS resources, and their CPA and estate attorney, we developed a strategy to gift a portion of ownership to a Donor Advised Fund pre- or post-sale.

6 - 12 months prior to sale

Liquidity

We worked with UBS’s Tailored Lending Group, leveraging our clients’ corporate stakes, essentially serving as a cash flow bridge between their go-to-market stage and the actual exit. UBS’s investment bank assisted Tailored Lending with valuation overview and prospects for the company.

0 – 2 months prior to sale

Investment plan

In collaboration with UBS’s Chief Investment Office and Portfolio Advisory Group, we created an investment plan for each client and their families. These explicitly matched capital and investment type to address particular short-, intermediate- and long-term objectives.

Family office education

We introduced UBS’s Family Office Solutions Group (FOSG) to educate each client on family office structures and tax considerations.

Identifying greater yield for our client’s corporate cash

The situation
Our client is the Founder and CEO of a company that was in the midst of closing the first tranche of a $100 million Series C funding. He introduced our team to his CFO to discuss the company’s cash management approach and to help determine if it could be enhanced.

Up to that point, the prospect of enhanced yield and a more robust approach to cash management had not been a priority. Now, our client wanted to ensure that he and the company were being wise stewards of their soon-to-be raised capital.

The strategy
Our team met with the company CFO to discuss their existing Investment Policy Statement and assess the cadence of expected cash flow and various concerns that were top of mind. Four goals were promptly identified during this and subsequent conversations: 1) potential for greater yield while maintaining focus on daily liquidity, operational needs and preservation of capital; 2) portfolio diversification aligned with their concern for greater yield; 3) adoption of a well-constructed Investment Policy Statement (IPS) focused on yield and diversification; and 4) providing the CFO, Controller and their teams with finger-tip access to an array of on-demand, detailed and compliant reporting capabilities.

Our team was agnostic and presented various cash management solutions. Specifically, we offered an introduction to multiple cash management teams inside and outside of UBS. We assisted our client in reviewing various cash management groups to assess the integrity and robustness of the company’s preexisting IPS. Recurring feedback from those vying for the cash management mandate showed us that various segments of the IPS could be improved upon for the benefit of the company and its fiduciaries.

In the end, the client hired UBS’s Asset Management (AM) to manage the assets and our team services the relationship from a banking and portfolio commentary standpoint. Additionally, AM’s portfolio managers avail themselves to the client by phone and in-person.

The result
We moved the needle for the client in a meaningful manner. Portfolio yield increased by approximately 150 basis points. This incremental income enhanced portfolio income by more than $1 million. Today the UBS portfolio is robust and diversified. It is allocated to A-rated or better fixed income instruments and, per their IPS, maintains a portfolio duration of less than 0.30.

On-demand reporting capabilities are provided (at no charge) to our client through AM’s relationship with a leading third-party provider. They offer robust web-based investment portfolio accounting, reporting and reconciliation services for institutional clients overseeing more than $3 trillion in assets.