An NAPL client calls with an opportunity to acquire/merge with a leading company in the region. The complicating factor is the ownership structure: one partner with 51% (woman-owned) and 4 others combined 49%. The shareholder issues involved in the pending opportunity are not unique. The print and graphics communications industry is full of family-owned partnerships. Ownership dynamics are complex and involve elements of succession planning, business valuation, and M&A, all under the backdrop of a rapidly changing industry. The M&A advisory team at NAPL has handled numerous ownership restructuring/M&A cases over the past few years. A few tips from prior experience: 1. Get to know the other partners as soon as politically correct...

Seasonality is one factor that drives the velocity of mergers and acquisitions activity among privately-owned print and graphics communications companies. It’s fair to say that M&A activity directly correlates to family sensitivities. Holidays bring families together both literally and figuratively, and, given that at least 25% of companies in our industry are family businesses, it’s no surprise that what goes on at the dining room table ends up in the conference room six to nine months later. Communications right after the New Year go something like this: “I’ve been thinking that this is the year to ‘do something’ with the business. My wife [substitute husband for woman-owned companies] and I talked over the holidays and it...

None of us like confrontations, least not business owners regardless of how ruff and gruff they appear. So how do you deliver a message that you really don’t want to deliver? I don’t have all the answers, but I do have one and here it is: write a script. No, not a lengthy melodramatic script. Write a script like I had my friend in Connecticut write. Here’s the background. Marty is a great guy. So great that some workers found it easy to get what they wanted. Don was such a guy. He was a CSR who worked from 5:00 am to 2:00 pm every day. That’s right, 5:00 am. Why? It wasn’t because Marty needed him to work those hours; rather it was an accommodation to Don. He was a single parent and his daughter got off from school at 3:00 and...

At the risk of sounding anti-American, please allow me to react to the concept of Small Business Saturday: bah, humbug! Don’t get me wrong. I’m not against small business. I’m not against picking up a few extra bucks in sales or potentially a new customer. I’m against the concept that we small business owners have to be given special protection in order to survive, like the snail darter. “Pick a small business in your community to shop at on Small Business Saturday,” the ad on television says. Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski do a stand-up patronization spot in which they implore good Americans to patronize small businesses. Hey, it’s about competition. And if a small business can’t compete alongside Wal-Mart, Target...