Business Transfer outside the Family

07.07.2005 - Only around half of all family-run businesses in Baden-Württemberg will be passed on to heirs within the family. " Business Succession outside the Family" was the issue of an international expert meeting organised in Stuttgart by the Ministry of Economic Affairs Baden-Württemberg and opened by Professor Willi Weiblen, head of the Ministry's SME policy department. The objective was to present established and effective possibilities of support available in different regions within Europe. Around 150 participants took part in the event.

MBO designates the acquisition of a company by the existing management or the company’s employees, in the case of an MBI the company is acquired by an external management group, usually with experience in that sector. Both forms of transfer outside the family require assistance to support both those transferring the company and those taking over. The experts meeting presented examples of measures taken in different European regions.

Europe wide some 610,000 small and medium sized enterprises with around 2.4 million jobs will be affected by the transfer from one generation to the next. "Safeguarding business succession is a central issue of Baden-Württemberg's SME policy" says Willi Weiblen. " In Baden-Württemberg around 3.500 business start-ups and transfers have been supported with a loan volume up to the tune of 462 million Euros last year". Further support is offered by a "12-Point Agenda" in co-operation with business organisations and support agencies.

The expert meeting was part of the project "Next Business Generation” (NBG). In the project the regions of Baden-Württemberg, Lombardy, Lower Austria, Thessaly, West
Midlands and the Canton of Zurich have com together to collectively develop solutions to safeguard business successions. The NBG project is supported with 864,000 Euros by the European Union in the framework of the INTERREG III C initiative and co-financed by the participating regions.