Family Business Advisory
Akin Bay has developed a unique and customized Family Business Advisory practice over the last 17 years. We recognize that family-owned businesses- whether entirely privately owned, or partially publicly owned, with a dominant equity ownership held by family shareholders- have unique characteristics which require a special focus and custom- tailored services. Over our history, our largest-scale and most challenging assignments have come from family owned businesses. Counseling such businesses inevitably involves a careful approach to the intersection of the family and personal considerations of ownership, coupled with strategic considerations of the future of the business and the preservation of family wealth. Examining these issues and their impact on a family-owned company's strategic and financial choices requires experience, sensitivity and in-depth industry knowledge.
Akin Bay has extensive experience with such family-controlled businesses. As a privately-held firm, we find our internal culture is compatible with those of the family-owned businesses for which we have provided corporate financial advice. Akin Bay understands that the sophisticated analysis of a family operated financial performance is only the beginning of its task, and of equal importance to our advisory role is the awareness of the unique issues which must be dealt with in any assignment for a family business.
Akin Bay has advised family businesses on the following: mergers and acquisitions, financing, special dividend recapitalizations, succession issues, managing the transition to a more professional and structured non-family management style, and the creation or revision of corporate governance and ownership structures consistent with changing family needs.
Akin Bay has enjoyed considerable success over our history in achieving extraordinary results for family-owned businesses. An example of this success was our engagement advising the family which owned and operated VitalChek Network, Inc. Akin Bay advised the family- operated company for five years after VitalChek first received an unsolicited purchase offer from a strategic competitor. We spent five years advising the company in its dramatic growth over this period. In 2002, we ran a very competitive auction with some of the largest public transaction processing, data brokerage and document processing companies in the market. Akin Bay was able to sell the company at a price at closing equal to 30 times the initial unsolicited offer in 1997. We have achieved similar results for other closely-held businesses over our history - see the “Transaction History” section of this site for further examples.
Akin Bay has developed its Family Business Advisory practice with the specific goal of assuring that no family-owned business need approach with apprehension the process of seeking a strategic partner, raising equity or debt capital, or selling the company in order to meet family goals, so long as it has the assistance of an experienced financial advisor dedicated to its needs, a role we believe Akin Bay is uniquely suited to fulfill.