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Plan Ahead for Long-Term Success with a Business Succession Strategy

Succession planning is a proactive approach that helps every business owner secure the future of the business by preparing for changes in shareholding and key leadership roles. Whether you manage a family business or a fast-growing enterprise, having a clear business succession plan in place helps minimise disruptions and ensures continuity.

At A2CO, we guide you through the succession planning process, helping you align with long-term business goals and ensure a smooth, tax-efficient transition when the time comes. Our approach combines regulatory knowledge, legal expertise, practical support, and tailored tax planning to suit your unique business.

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The Business Succession Planning Process and How It Helps Family Businesses

The Business Succession Planning Process Explained

A2CO’s approach to succession management is structured but flexible, adapting to your organisation’s scale, needs, and industry. Our succession planning process typically includes the following steps:

  • Structuring the transition legally and efficiently: We provide legal guidance, tax structuring, and document support to manage ownership transfers and exit planning.
  • Ongoing review and adaptation: A succession plan should evolve. We review your plan periodically and help you adapt it to changes in your business strategy, team, or market.

This strategic process is supported by our other services, including corporate tax, mergers and acquisitions, and audit coordination where financial or structural change is involved.

Identifying the Right Successor for Key Roles

The success of any succession plan depends on choosing the right successors. We help you assess your internal candidates, define the right skills, and plan for learning and development opportunities that strengthen your leadership pipeline.

We also support with

  • Workforce planning and mapping of key employees
  • Training and development plans for high-potential staff
  • Planning for senior leaders to mentor future successors
  • Mitigating the loss of organisational knowledge

If your company operates in a regulated industry, we help ensure new leaders meet any legal or technical requirements, such as for director roles, financial service positions, or iGaming key functions.

Liquidity and Tax Considerations in Succession Planning

Liquidity constraints remain a critical risk for family-owned businesses. This is especially the case when cash flow is insufficient to meet obligations or when assets cannot be realised without incurring significant losses.

Tax optimisation plays a vital role in reducing these risks. Careful planning, including the use of available deductions, exemptions, and reliefs, helps preserve liquidity and prevents unforeseen liabilities. Structuring succession and ownership transitions in a tax-efficient way can also ease sudden cash pressures caused by inheritance or transfer-related tax costs.

In Malta, a wide range of incentives can further ease the financial burden. These include grants, tax credits, and subsidised loans. For example, the Family Businesses Grant Scheme supports succession planning advisory services, while Micro Invest offers higher funding thresholds for family businesses. Other measures, such as the SME Guarantee Scheme and the Guaranteed Co-Lending Scheme from the Malta Development Bank, improve access to financing that encourages growth and diversification.

At A2CO, we combine succession planning with liquidity and tax strategies to ensure that transitions are not only smooth but also financially sustainable.

Our Business Succession Planning Services

We offer a wide range of services to support the full succession process:

Drafting business succession plans
Legal support for ownership transfers
Succession planning for family businesses
Identifying and developing future leaders
Creating succession planning checklists and templates
Cross-border succession planning for international businesses
Tax Planning advisory

Why Choose A2CO

Business owners choose A2CO because we combine clarity, confidentiality, and competence. We offer:

Deep knowledge of succession planning in Malta and EU frameworks
Tailored guidance for family-run and multi-generational businesses
Templates and tools to support your internal management processes
Support across legal, tax, compliance, HR and operational matters
A trusted team that helps you secure the future of your business
"We recently had the pleasure of entrusting a major corporate restructuring project to A2CO. The A2CO team hand-held and guided us all the way - from understanding our concept to completion. All was executed in a clear and professional manner. Practical and workable solutions were found to address the inevitable challenges, enabling us to complete this complex project on time and within budget. We have nothing but praise and respect for the A2CO team."
70+
-
Years of Combined Corporate Experience

What our clients say about us

FAQs

Frequently Asked Questions

It is a strategic document that outlines how leadership or ownership of a business will be transferred in the future.

It helps manage expectations, protect the business, and secure your family’s legacy.

Start by identifying key roles, choosing potential successors, and working with experts to document the legal and financial steps involved.

Yes. We support businesses operating in Malta and beyond with cross-border legal and tax planning.

Couldn't find your answer?
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Antoinette Scerri
Antoinette Scerri

Partner

Oliver Zammit
Oliver Zammit

Partner

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