A wave of business ownership transitions is approaching, and Michael Gold says many families aren’t ready for it. The founder and CEO of Gold Family Wealth in Westport, Connecticut has spent much of his career studying why sophisticated families still stumble during major financial transitions.
Nearly three quarters of privately held business owners expect to transition or exit their companies within the next ten years. Industry estimates place the value of that coming wave between ten and fourteen trillion dollars. Despite the scale, Gold argues many owners remain unprepared because their advisors rarely coordinate with one another.
The Cost of Waiting
Gold often notes that families do not think about the end goal early enough. Michael Gold Westport points to cases where business owners must delay a sale by a full year simply to re characterize assets and avoid excessive tax drag, delays that trace back to planning done in separate silos rather than as a unified strategy.
Michael Gold’s Westport firm approaches business transitions differently, stress testing tax implications across multiple liquidity scenarios well before a sale is finalized. Structural issues that could derail a deal get identified years in advance instead of surfacing during due diligence, when options for fixing them are limited and far more expensive.
Coordination as Protection
The firm’s dedicated practice for ultra high net worth families treats business exit planning as inseparable from estate planning, philanthropic goals, and family governance. Rather than treating a sale as a single event, Gold’s team builds a timeline that accounts for how the transaction affects every other part of a family’s financial life.
Gold earned recognition as a Forbes Best in State Wealth Advisor in 2025, a nod to an approach that puts long term coordination ahead of last minute scrambling. For business owning families in Westport and across the country, his message is straightforward: waiting until a deal is on the table is too late to start planning for it. See related link for more information.
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