PwC opens regional centre of excellence for family businesses in Singapore

In response to growing demand from family businesses in Asia Pacific for expertise and thought leadership around succession planning, family governance and strategic growth advice, PwC is setting up a new specialist centre of excellence headquartered in Singapore to cater to the needs of family businesses located in the region.

Led by Ng Siew Quan, PwC’s Asia Pacific Entrepreneurial & Private Clients Leader, the Centre will focus on advising businesses with a special focus on the next generation of family business leaders (next gen).

Ng brings with him almost a decade of experience as a trusted family business adviser along with a network of family business experts from Europe and the Americas, who will provide insight and capabilities from their experiences working with older family businesses from the Western part of the world.

Says Sian Steele, PwC UK Family Business Leader and Panel Advisor of the new PwC Centre for Family Business Excellence, “Many family businesses from Europe and more mature markets are in the fifth generation or older. Our latest Family Business Survey shows that although these family businesses may differ in location of origin, many of the issues they face around succession planning or inter-generational change are largely similar.

“By bringing experts together from across regions, Asian family businesses can learn a lot from the experience of older, more established family businesses to help them navigate through the difficult and challenging times.”

The challenges that family businesses in Singapore face to expand are not unique, but there is often an added layer of complexity either in the form of resistance from the older generation of management or workers, or the lack of a succession talent pipeline.

Adds Ng: “Ninety-nine percent of enterprises in Singapore are SMEs, and a large component are family businesses. This means that family businesses are a key pillar of both Singapore economy and society. As Singapore steps up plans to boost innovation and globalisation, Singapore family businesses must follow suit or risk losing relevance.”

posted from Bloggeroid

Digi's Chinese new year promotion focuses on family and tradition

Source: Digi website.

Chinese new year is often the only time in a year when many Chinese see distant relatives, and Malaysian telco Digi is banking on that to run a new year promotion that could reach many eyeballs the world over.

Digi is running a promotion to bring back more precise family titles for Chinese families in an age where relatives outside the immediate family are simply called 'aunty', 'uncle' and 'cousin'. In Chinese, maternal and paternal relatives are differentiated by different titles. There are also different terms used if the person is younger or older than the individual or the individual's parents. Things become convoluted in large families where the youngest children in one generation may be younger than the oldest grandchildren two generations away.

"May you always find the right words to bring your family joy," says Digi to subscribers on its kakilang (own people) website. The company has a quick video as well as a cheat sheet for those who want to know that their paternal uncle who is younger than their father should be greeted as shushu（叔叔) while their maternal aunt who is older than their mother should really be greeted as yima (姨妈).

Interested?

Save the cheat sheet or view the associated video
Digi is also running a related contest on Facebook that ends 22 February

Singapore's family-run businesses the least prepared for succession

Family businesses in Singapore are the least prepared of five countries in Southeast Asia for what happens after the current business leader steps down or retires, according to a new report commissioned by the Labuan International Business and Financial Centre (IBFC), a mid-shore international business and finance centre serving the Asia Pacific region.

Source: Labuan IBFC.

Just 58% of Singapore family businesses have prepared for succession, states the Building Legacies: Family Business Succession in Southeast Asia report* by the Economist Intelligence Unit. A further third (35%) have established formal wealth management structures such as private foundations while 41% maintain trusts for inter-generational wealth transfer, fewer than their peers in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand.

In contrast, Indonesian family-run businesses reported the largest share of companies with formal succession plans. The survey found that 78% of family businesses in Indonesia have formal succession plans, with 57% saying they have already established private foundations and 53% reporting that they have trusts to manage wealth and succession.

Kevin Plumberg, Senior Editor, Thought Leadership, Asia, EIU, the editor of the report, noted that succession planning is more than the naming of a successor. He said: “The question is whether it's the right plan, something that can last for generations."

Plumberg highlighted the counterintuitive finding that business families in Singapore, a financial hub for the region, lag in their use of foundations, trusts and external advisors when it comes to succession issues, whereas family-run companies in Indonesia are leaders. "It is representative of the region’s diversity as well as its uneven progress in addressing questions about succession,” he said.

The report, based on a survey of 250 majority family-owned businesses from Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines states that 60% of all listed firms in Southeast Asia are family-run, making their success crucial to national economies. The report also found that customers and investors have more trust in a family-owned business with a succession plan than those without, with 71% of regional family business leaders acknowledging it is easier to attract investment with a succession plan in place.

Saiful Bahari Baharom, Chief Executive Officer of Labuan IBFC, said: “Family-run businesses account for more than 60% of all publicly-listed companies in ASEAN, making them an essential part of the region’s growth. Considering the significance of these businesses to the region, this research has shown that there is an over-reliance on informal structures such as family councils to manage succession issues, which are neither legally binding nor necessarily permanent structures.”

Research highlights include:

• Two-thirds (67%) of respondents said they have a succession plan, while 71% of these two-thirds have had the plan reviewed by their boards.
• Two-thirds (65%) say the family is involved in long-term decisions about the company and 29% are involved in day-to-day operations.
• Ten percent of businesses have measures in place to allow family members to be excluded from management. Businesses in their third generation or later have usually instituted such a measure. 
• More than half (55%) of all Southeast Asian business families use informal gatherings or family councils for business governance. "Retaining control is paramount," Plumberg explained. 
• Indonesia leads the pack with 74% of respondents reporting that they have a family council, with Thailand a distant second with 56% of respondents reporting the same. Singapore was dead last with 40% of respondents saying that they have a family council.

The full report is available online here.

*The report is based on a survey and interviews conducted in from July to August 2014. Survey respondents included 250 majority family-owned businesses from Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. All respondents have senior managerial responsibility at a minimum, and 50% of respondents are board members or C-level executives. Slightly over half (54%) are first-generation businesses. Sixty-two percent of survey respondents are from companies with global annual revenues of US$150 million or less, and 11% make US$1 billion or more.