Fitzpatricks Advice Partners has been helping Australians build, protect and transition wealth since 1994. A team of dedicated advisers, united by a shared philosophy.
Fitzpatricks Advice Partners has been helping Australians build, protect and transition wealth since 1994. A team of dedicated advisers, united by a shared philosophy.
Fitzpatricks Advice Partners has been helping Australians build, protect and transition wealth since 1994. A team of dedicated advisers, united by a shared philosophy.
You have spent years building something valuable.
The exit deserves the same care.
We work alongside owners long before a sale or transfer is on the table, acting as both a business coach and a financial partner. That means regular, honest conversations about the decisions every owner faces: whether to bring on a new hire, how to structure incentives to retain key people, and what a change in ownership means for the relationships that hold the business together.
What makes our conversations with clients different are the questions a Fitzpatricks Advice Partners Lead Adviser asks. It’s not just about the numbers and “what your business is worth?”, but “what does handing it over actually mean for you and your family?” Our Lead Advisers go beyond the transaction to ask the questions about family, what ownership means to you, and what a good outcome looks like.
What most business owners discover too late is that nobody is ensuring the succession plan, capital gains tax (CGT) strategy, investment approach and estate plan are all pulling in the same direction. That is the role of the Lead Adviser at Fitzpatricks Advice Partners: the conductor who brings together a best-of-breed team of advisers and keeps your priorities at the centre throughout.
Your Lead Adviser starts with your end goals in mind and how you can achieve them in your desired timeframe. That means where you want the business to be, what you want your life to look like after it, and what this transition means for the people around you. For business owners, those questions often surface things that have never been asked before: what ownership means to you beyond the financial return, what a good outcome looks like for everyone it impacts, how the family dynamics around the business need to be understood before any transaction takes place. A Fitzpatricks Advice Partners Lead Adviser knows how to ask exactly those questions, and to stay in the conversation long enough to hear the real answers.
That relationship often begins well before succession is on the agenda. In the years leading up to exit, your Lead Adviser acts as a business coaching partner as much as a financial one: a sounding board for business decisions, an accountability partner for the goals you have set, and a connector to the right people at the right time. By the time exit becomes a reality, your adviser already understands your business, your family and your priorities in depth. From that foundation, they bring together the right expertise at the right time: tax advisers, estate planners, self-managed super fund (SMSF) administrators, insurers and legal professionals, each engaged at the right time for the right purpose, with every decision tied back to the outcomes that matter most to you.
For business owners whose succession event leads into a broader relationship about how the proceeds are invested and managed, private wealth portfolio management and business succession are closely connected. Where the exit raises questions about family governance and structure or evolves into broader intergenerational wealth management planning, your Lead Adviser is already across them.
There is no standard process, no second attempt, and no undoing a decision made under time pressure or without the right advice.
According to PwC Australia’s Family Business Survey, only 25% of Australian family businesses have a robust, documented and communicated succession plan, meaning three in four do not. That is not a fringe problem. It is the norm.
A business sold under time pressure typically sells for less than it is worth. The opportunity to reduce or eliminate tax under the small business CGT concessions is not fully utilised or completely missed. The estate plan written when the business was worth say $600,000 has not been updated now that it is worth $4 million. Leadership transition handled at the last minute disrupts the clients and staff who made the business valuable in the first place.
Beyond the financial cost is a harder one. Business owners who exit without a plan often describe the experience not as the relief they expected, but as a loss. Something they spent years building did not end the way it deserved to.
The Baby Boomer generation built much of Australia's private business wealth. It is now beginning to sell it, hand it to the next generation, or transfer it to management. For most of those owners, the exit is the largest financial event of their lives. The preparation rarely matches the moment.
Most of these owners are not ready: no business valuation, no succession plan, no clear path for what happens next.
At Fitzpatricks Advice Partners, the conversation begins at the point where decisions you make about your business today are already shaping your options tomorrow. For those already within that window or closer to exit, it is not too late; beginning now is still far better than beginning at the point of sale.
That includes getting clear on exit goals and the preferred route out; completing a formal business valuation; reviewing ownership structures and how they affect the exit options; understanding CGT implications; managing key person risk in the lead-up to transition; building a leadership pipeline where relevant; coordinating legal documentation; and working with your estate planner to update the estate plan to reflect the business's current value and the owner's post-exit financial position.
Choosing the right exit strategy for business owners is rarely straightforward. The main exit routes are an outright sale, a management buyout, a family transfer, an employee ownership scheme and a gradual wind-down. Each has different CGT implications, different consequences for the business’s ongoing value, and a different impact on how proceeds flow into the owner’s estate and investment portfolio.
For some owners, the route is clear. For others, particularly those who have built alongside family members or long-standing colleagues, the decision is as much personal as it is financial. Understanding which exit strategy best suits your situation, across both dimensions, is something worth addressing early, before circumstances make the decision for you.
Many small business owners haven't had the luxury of putting money aside for retirement, needing instead to retain earnings in the business to fund growth or simply to remain afloat. For them, their business is their superannuation.
Thankfully, small business owners selling their business (or a business asset), may be able to disregard some, or all, of any capital gain by utilising the generous small business CGT concessions. In addition, they may be able to make up lost ground and boost their retirement savings by contributing the proceeds to super.
Where the sale of a business, or business asset, gives rise to a capital gain, that gain may be reduced, even eliminated, if you can apply the small business CGT concessions.
The most generous is the 15-year exemption where the entire capital gain on disposal of a business asset owned for at least 15 years is disregarded. You must be permanently incapacitated or aged 55 or more and retiring.
If you don't qualify for this concession, there is the 50% active asset reduction. Then there is the retirement exemption, which provides a reduction of up to a lifetime limit of $500,000 in the capital gain. If you are under age 55, the amount must be contributed to super. Finally, there is rollover relief, where the gain is deferred when a replacement asset is acquired within the required timeframe.
Many business owners only discover these concessions around the time of sale, leaving little time to plan. For some, it is too late and the window has closed. For owners who miss the opportunity or do not get this right, the financial cost is significant and cannot be undone.
Eligibility conditions must be met before the exit event, not after. We work closely with your tax adviser to ensure the opportunity is not missed and those conditions are met well ahead of any exit.
Note: specific tax advice should always be sought from a qualified tax adviser for your individual circumstances.
Wealth transfer planning is about making sure the wealth from a business exit reaches the right people, in the right structures, at the right time and in a tax-effective way. For owners with families, partners or adult children, that means coordinating investment strategy, estate planning, superannuation structuring and asset protection.
Managing a liquid investment portfolio after an exit is different from running a business, and the instinct to concentrate in property or the same sector can recreate the very concentration risk the owner has just exited from. This is where private wealth portfolio management picks up after the succession event.
Asset protection does not end at exit. A liquid estate is in some ways more exposed than a business-owning one. Litigation risk, relationship breakdown and estate disputes are all real exposures once wealth has been converted to investable assets.
Family trust structures, appropriate insurance and considered estate planning remain relevant long after the business is sold. Fitzpatricks Advice Partners works alongside legal and insurance professionals to ensure the right structures are in place for your post-exit position.
For owners whose exit creates family-office-scale wealth, our emerging family office services may be worth exploring as a framework for managing that complexity.
The estate plan written before the exit is rarely the right one after it. For many business owners, revisiting it is also the first time they seriously consider what they want their wealth to mean, and who they want it to reach, questions a Fitzpatricks Advice Partners Lead Adviser is well placed to work through alongside them.
Wills, testamentary trusts, SMSF succession, superannuation death benefit nominations and powers of attorney all need reviewing in light of the new asset position, and your Lead Adviser will work alongside your legal and estate advisers to ensure nothing is overlooked.
Wealth structuring and family governance connects the succession outcome to a long-term estate framework built for the next generation.
Coordinating all of this after an exit, while managing the personal and family dimensions that come with it, is exactly what the Fitzpatricks Advice Partners Lead Adviser model is designed for.
This may be relevant if you are:
For every one of these clients, the succession event marks a significant moment, not just financially but personally. The relationships that deliver the best outcomes are the ones that begin well before that moment. That is where Fitzpatricks Advice Partners works best.
Whether you are years from exit or months away, the right conversation
starts the same way: with your goals, not the transaction.
No obligation, no pressure, fully confidential.