The situation turned out well in the end. But she has written a book describing the emotional roller coaster she went through and how she fought for the company’s well-being. On SAAL ZWEI, she talks about her anger, grief, pride, and pragmatism—and shows how other entrepreneurs and heirs can learn from her experiences.
“For 15 years, I had worked alongside my father in our company, held positions in various departments, learned a great deal from him, and taken on leadership responsibilities at the top of the company. Whenever the topics of succession or a will came up, he immediately clammed up.
Originally, my father planned to step down from the company at age 65. But when the time finally came, he preferred to point to the vitality of certain German presidents and announced he would live to be 100. For him, the question of whether he was ready to let go was tied to deeply existential issues—the desire for power and control, and the pain of having to relinquish precisely those things.
But then everything changed. My father died suddenly and unexpectedly at the age of 69. It was a shock. But there was no time for grief. Pretty quickly, we as a family had to realize that we couldn’t simply continue running the company.
I knew that my father didn’t want to burden us women, as his successors, with the weight of entrepreneurship. His plan: to sell the company immediately after his death. But was that what I wanted? It quickly became clear: I had no other choice. Or did I want to run the company for 30 years alongside an executor? To explain: Our will included a provision for a permanent executor—and that applies for a maximum period of 30 years.
Just as my father didn’t want to think about his own passing, he didn’t concern himself with the details of this provision—and trusted his longtime tax advisor and executor.
After a thorough legal review, it became clear that the executor would not only have been at my side for 30 years, but had also secured extensive voting rights for himself in the will and the articles of incorporation—rights that were not immediately apparent to my father.
(My father had gifted the company to us daughters in 2008 for tax reasons. In the articles of incorporation, he had secured the majority of the voting rights for himself so that he could continue to make decisions regarding the company and the allocation of profits. In the event of his death, these voting rights were to be transferred to the executor for the purpose of settling the estate. Since this agreement had been signed at a completely different time, no one noticed the connection to the will.)
So instead of arranging the funeral, we now had to fight to retain control of our own company. This decision had to be made within four weeks. While one part of the family took care of the funeral, I gathered bankers and lawyers around me to document our intention to sell—at least in writing and in a formally correct manner—to the executor. At the same time, we didn’t want to alarm the employees.
“During the sales presentations, I felt sick to my stomach; I was gasping for air.”
Once that was done, however, the real work began: How do I sell a company? What price tag does a life’s work carry? Such issues had never been on the table in our company. The law firm guiding us through this process conducted what’s known as “vendor due diligence” with us. This gave us, as a family, an idea of our company’s value. It was significantly lower than what my father had calculated for us over the years. This isn’t an unusual phenomenon, as bankers have told me.
The sales negotiations followed. I had presented our company many times before, but never with the intention of selling it. Selling my father’s legacy was such an existential issue for me that I felt paralyzed. I felt nauseous and gasped for air by the open window. But once I was in the conference room, I switched into business mode. This went on for a year. At the same time, I continued to run the company. My message was that our company had a bright future—especially for the employees. It worked out. But this double life weighed heavily on me.
It’s thanks to my personal support system that I got through that time as well as I possibly could. Among the bidders, we included family-owned businesses in the industry, large corporations, and a small group of investors. One criterion for the sale was certainly the price. Another was how our employees would be integrated into the other company.
Everything fit together very well at Wisag, a family-run service company. Here, our employees and customers were able to find a new home. The founder and his successor, the Wisser family, were the same age as my father and me. Around the same time, the son had launched a mission statement process to ensure the company was modern and in step with the times. Both companies had been shaped by patriarchs in their first generation. This was a good fit emotionally, but our service offerings also complemented each other well. The chemistry was just right.
The sale process took over a year. I spent three years there overseeing the integration. Today, I’m forging my own path and supporting families through generational transitions. I want to help them identify the stumbling blocks that lie along this path. My credo, which applies to others going through this process as well: “If only we’d talked about it sooner and taken the interests of individual family members into account. That would have saved us a lot of heartache, time, and money.”
Kirsten Schubert joined her parents’ company, the Düsseldorf-based Schubert Group, in 1996. She led it until its sale in 2012 and oversaw the integration for three years. At the same time, she founded Reef Consulting and advises entrepreneurial families on succession planning.
