Family Business Lawyers in London - Boodle Hatfield

Your lawyers since 1722

Family Business

Family businesses are key to the local and global economy, driving the growth of private capital across the world.

Boodle Hatfield has been a long-term strategic advisor to family businesses for generations, guiding families and their businesses to help achieve their commercial objectives. We provide a well-established private client legal practice serving some of the largest family businesses in the UK and internationally.

We are able to blend our private client advice seamlessly with our corporate and dispute expertise to help family businesses navigate the evolving private capital landscape.

With regulation around the world increasing for privately-owned businesses, corporate governance is now being balanced with the passion that drives a successful family business. Combined with an increased focus on ESG endeavours – particularly around philanthropy, and the day-to-day running of the business and managing the shareholder’s needs – a holistic approach across the family and the business is critical. Forward planning, innovative thinking and risk mitigation all executed efficiently is key.

Whether you are looking at how marriage and divorce could affect the family business, considering bringing in non-family senior executives or want to restructure your business alongside other family assets we are able to help.

Our family business group provides an all-encompassing legal service to family businesses and their shareholders, with a specific focus on legacy and succession. We specialise in providing joined up advice to both the shareholder and the business with a targeted focus on the needs of the family. We are proud of our ability to be the long-term strategic advisory partners for our clients, really understanding both their family and commercial objectives.

Boodle Hatfield is a corporate partner of Family Business UK’s (FBUK) –  a growing body of family businesses working to create a more prosperous and sustainable future for generations to come. The firm was selected by the organisation as a highly respected independent family business service provider. In recognition of the firm’s expertise in ‘providing clear and pragmatic advice that factors in the fast pace of change in the world of family-owned businesses‘, Boodle Hatfield was awarded ‘Family Business Advisory Practice of the Year’ at the annual Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners (STEP) Awards 2023.

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A Legacy Intact: a guide to safeguarding your family business in the event of divorce

Written by Partner, Katie O’Callaghan the guide – A Legacy Intact: safeguarding your family business in the event of divorce, details the legal mechanisms that are available to family businesses to protect their assets and avoid them losing control in future. It covers pre- and post-nuptial agreements, using trusts and Family Investment Companies (‘FICs’) as vehicles for holding shares and corporate governance. These instruments can be employed to avoid the severe repercussions of divorce that in the worst case scenario can lead to the sale or transfer of shares, pensions and property. The guide highlights risks family businesses can face around loss of privacy, with the possibility of media access to financial proceedings and the measures that companies can consider to limit this exposure.

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The Lessons in Legacy Podcast

In The Lessons in Legacy Podcast we speak with a number of leading academics, professional advisers and business leaders about the evolution in the approaches, attitudes and adjustments successful individuals and families are taking to plan for wealth transfer. We break down some of the themes that are now front of mind for those responsible for family wealth and take into account the priorities of the succeeding generation and look at how, in turn, we as advisers can support and steward a legacy’s sustainability and reflect a families’ longer term purpose, values and sense of cohesion.

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