“Business inherited: how to save your business for posterity” — Anna Volynets on the materials of the Delovoy Peterburg’s round table “Inheritance of Business 2021”
The transfer of a business by inheritance after the death of its owner remains a difficult task in Russia, despite the fact that new mechanisms are emerging in the legislation to facilitate it. At the Delovoy Peterburg's round table "Inheritance of Business 2021", practicing lawyers gave advice on how to reduce the likelihood of conflicts of heirs and bankruptcy of companies left without their creators. According to them, the transfer of business by inheritance is associated with certain problems.
The business owner has a lot of other problems that need to be solved,
– explains Anna Volynets, the lawyer and project manager in Prime Advice.
— It is difficult to talk about death, to plan the order of actions that will be performed, and we are talking about detailed planning — this is also a sensitive topic from the point of view of psychology.
Meanwhile, if the main owner passes away, then, as a rule, at least six months pass before their heirs take possession of their business. This can be a very difficult period for the company.
For six months before the heirs receive the inheritance certificate, they cannot, for example, vote with shares in the company. And here the question arises: how will the creditors react to this, if the company is credited, and the creditors, for example, were ready to work when the company had a leader who was clear and known to them? The leader leaves, the management remains, and sometimes creditors in such a situation, realizing that there is no clear plan for this period, are more interested in getting satisfaction of their claims or refusing indulgences that, for example, were made in relation to the business owner,
— Anna Volynets gives an example.
In her opinion, the problem can be solved by choosing an executor (executor of the will), who will manage the shares immediately after the death of its owner.