We care about your legacy and your business
Family-owned businesses are uniquely positioned for high performance and longevity. The keys to unlocking success are strong corporate governance and separate but equally strong wealth management. RSR Partners operates at this intersection. For more than 25 years, we have advised family-owned businesses regarding governance, CEO succession, board (or Advisory Board) recruiting, and executive search, and, for our clients who create family offices, we have secured investment and operational leaders that minimize risks, guide investments, and provide opportunities for progression and growth. We are proud to share that many of our client relationships are long-term. We have earned these relationships over time through our commitment to our clients’ family legacy and the ongoing success of the business. Our assignments for family-owned businesses and family offices are often complex, and our goal is to solve for our clients’ unique needs in addition to identifying exceptional talent.
Good governance and its impact on longevity
There are more than 5.5 million family-owned businesses in America. The family-owned businesses that experience longevity attribute their success to good governance and positive culture. However, only 30% of family businesses survive the transition from first to second-generation ownership, and even fewer survive the transition from second to third-generation ownership. Many families are reluctant to plan for succession. There may be concerns about the readiness and willingness of future family members to manage the business or the idea of external leadership may be unsettling. Often, the tools to facilitate succession or another strategic event are not in place. Family offices often provide security for the business and the family to plan for transitions. Failure to impose good governance, plan for succession, or to create vehicles necessary to ensure a successful transition contribute to the loss of family-owned businesses over time.
The team at RSR Partners understands these factors. We have the toolkit to help family-owned businesses assess culture, develop a governance structure to be successful in the short- and long-term, and we also guide and prepare family members for succession – whether the next leader is a family member or an external candidate. Most importantly, we provide advice around the role a family office plays in transitions. Some of the services we provide include:
The importance of sustainable fit
It is essential that family-owned businesses engage trusted advisors who will take the time to understand the nuances of their culture and decision-making process in order to attract and retain high-caliber talent to their executive teams. We therefore always begin our assignments with a discovery process that allows us to ensure that all stakeholders are clearly aligned regarding the responsibilities of the relevant role and ideal candidate profile. Additionally, articulating the characteristics that embody the family’s values is as important as the experience and competencies required for success.
Whether the situation is a family-owned business with a founder, intergenerational, or family-to-non-family transition, we aim to assess and identify candidates who exhibit the behaviors and beliefs that align with the family and the business’ vision for the future. We are committed to helping our clients make better talent decisions around fit and build a sustainable pipeline of talent poised to further the success of the business. RSR specializes in providing families and leadership with talent strategies to help them along this path to success. Just some of the leaders we have recruited for family-owned businesses include:
Recruiting the right investment experience
We are equally experienced in supporting the leadership needs of family offices, essential to the harmony between the family, the family’s assets, and the family’s business. Just as family offices play an integral role in leadership succession planning, they also support business opportunities and facilitate strategic options by disentangling the family’s wealth from the business. Similarly, the family often recognizes that their interests are better served when they can manage the family assets independently. Family offices also serve to engage the family’s next generation since they operate as a vehicle to grow and diversify the family’s assets. This provides the family’s next generation with a variety of ways to involve themselves in the stewardship of the family’s wealth, which can help bride the gap between generations and preserve the family’s cohesion and legacy.
Our dedicated team focuses on attracting best-in-class investment, financial, operational, and general management talent to the unique benefits of working within a family office. As family offices become more professionalized, with more robust internal investment teams, higher quality investment reporting, and more incentivized compensation structures, clients have relied on us to persuade candidates to move to a family office environment. Our work across traditional asset managers, endowments and foundations, alternative asset managers, outsourced CIO firms, and private wealth management firms enables us to recruit from a broad and diverse candidate base. We have a strong track record of success, and in many cases, we have been enlisted to build our successful candidates’ teams and eventually to recruit their successors. With patient, long-term pools of capital, family offices are increasingly viewed as a stable and stimulating investment management platform, requiring the “best-in-class” talent that RSR can provide. Examples of positions we commonly fill at family offices include:
