Family businesses are heading into one of the largest handovers in modern commerce. Here is what advisors should understand about the owners on the other side of the table.
Imagine a founder who spent thirty years building a company that carries the family name. It might be a manufacturer in Germany, a distributor in Brazil or a logistics group in Vietnam. They are nearing retirement, they have a succession plan of sorts, and they have never sold anything this size in their life. Over the next few years, a great many owners like this will find themselves across the table from a buyer. Deloitte’s 2026 global research finds that 27% of families and 40% of family businesses are either going through leadership succession now or will within the next decade. Since nearly three-quarters of the family businesses in Deloitte’s 2025 survey are still in their first or second generation, the person who built the company is often still deeply involved, which is part of why the handover feels so personal.
Most of these owners believe they have prepared. Some 82% of family businesses report having a succession plan of some kind, but only about half have a thorough, well-developed one, and just 48% are highly confident in current family leadership’s readiness, falling to 37% for the next generation. A separate Deloitte survey of US family business executives shows the same gap: 85% say CEO succession planning is critical, yet only 57% have a plan and fewer than a quarter (23%) are actively implementing one. The obstacles are mostly human. Owners point to an inexperienced next generation (35%), difficulty identifying a successor (33%), and current leaders reluctant to let go (32%).
Meanwhile, standing still is getting harder. PwC’s 2025 survey of 1,325 family businesses found that only one in four achieved double-digit sales growth, down from 43% two years earlier. Leadership is changing shape too: the share of family businesses led by an external professional CEO is projected to double from 13% to 26% after succession. Policymakers have noticed. In June 2026 the European Commission issued a new Recommendation on business transfers, noting a growing number of owners approaching retirement without a designated successor, and warning that strategic European businesses may increasingly be acquired by foreign buyers if European ones don’t step forward.
The market these owners are entering is open but selective. US private equity completed 3,999 deals in the first half of 2026, with Q2 volume falling from 2,191 to 1,808 despite abundant dry powder. Exits are the bottleneck: only 872 PE-backed exits were completed in the first half, compared with 1,210 a year earlier, and one Q2 update counts more than 13,500 unsold PE-owned companies. In practical terms, a family seller may be competing for buyer attention with a long queue of sponsor-owned assets, which rewards those with a clear, well-documented story.
Preparation shapes the outcome. Deloitte notes that a family’s readiness to sell will likely affect the interest, valuation and terms it receives, and that a handful of earnings items judged unsustainable can lower a buyer’s view of EBITDA. The headline price is only part of the picture. In SRS Acquiom’s 2026 study, 88% of 2025 private-target deals involved an escrow or holdback, averaging 12.1% of transaction value in deals without buyer-side insurance. Buyers, as Fasken reads the data, are returning but remain cautious about valuations and post-closing disputes.
A full sale is also not the only option. Deloitte describes structures such as fixed-return debt with limited board rights, or convertible preferred, participating preferred and minority equity, which let a family keep control while raising capital or liquidity. Family offices are often described as natural patient buyers, though the picture is more nuanced. UBS’s 2025 survey found that family offices planning changes intended to cut private markets allocations from 21% to 18%, mainly through direct investments, as slow exits and costly financing weighed. They are a real part of the buyer universe, and a selective one.
For advisors, the lesson is that the work starts long before a process launches. The owners who do best are usually those who had time to think about who in the family truly wants to lead, which earnings will survive diligence, and whether a full sale, a minority partner or an outside CEO fits what they want. The advisors who earn their trust will be the ones who helped them see those choices before a crisis forced them.