Business Owners

Defining your intent

For entrepreneurs, selling a business often marks a profound transformation in their relationship with wealth—shifting from business ownership to managing liquid assets. This transition brings both significant opportunities and challenges. Those who navigate it most successfully tend to clarify their “why” at the outset and establish a clear purpose for their newfound financial freedom.

J.P. Morgan Private Bank’s Goals-Based Planning can help you pinpoint a strategy for your wealth, articulate your goals and set milestones. The result is an approach that’s both clear and actionable.

A new kind of wealth

When a family’s net worth is tied up in a business, a fixed structure upholds its dynamics. Value is only realised as and when distributions are made, typically in the form of dividends, with the majority of wealth being retained within the business. Accessing this capital base is often less straightforward: assets are largely illiquid as balance sheet stability and business growth take precedence over capital distribution.

An exit transforms this dynamic by turning enterprise value into liquid resources that require an intentional plan. While the business remains intact, the family wealth is less tangible and allocation across the family is restricted. Post‑sale, priorities often shift from growing net worth through the enterprise to maintaining, scaling and potentially stewarding the capital base for future generations. This is why an exit can represent such a seismic transition.

Values, vision, purpose

Many founders recognize that having a clear business strategy has contributed to their company’s success. In much the same way, understanding and defining your family’s values, vision and purpose is equally significant. Without this clarity, wealth can become difficult to manage, particularly if you want it to be passed down through generations.

A clearly articulated intent for family wealth anchors decision making by segmenting wealth into specific allocations: liquidity, lifestyle, growth and legacy. In this way, your family can ensure that all aspects of life are accounted for, and that the wealth created actively supports your broader aims.

Reflecting on the values that shape your family’s ambitions can provide a foundation upon which more granular financial judgements can be made. These principles can act as your north star, underpinning everything you do post-business exit.

For example, you might determine that your business’s success was achieved through entrepreneurialism, hard work and creativity. Naturally, it follows that these three core values will inform your family’s future decision-making, stability, happiness and success.

With these convictions in mind, it’s imperative that you articulate a vision for the liquidity you’ll realize from the disposal of your business. In other words, if in 10 years’ time everything goes to plan, what will you and your family be doing individually and as a family unit? What will your wealth be achieving for you?

You might collectively agree that it’s for certain ends, such as education, health and wellbeing, housing and entrepreneurial activity. Similarly, you should also specify what money is not for. We help entrepreneurs devise a plan for why, how and when their assets will be deployed, with the opportunity to share insights from those going through a similar process.

Your wealth was built with great intention. Its future should be too

Given the psychological impact of a sale, it is valuable to map how proceeds will be organized before the mechanics of the exit are finalized. Across “mental” accounts and family members, we help you figure out what each portion is designed to fund—today and over the long term.

The sale of a business often magnifies the fact that financial choices can have long-lasting implications. Our practical forecasting helps you evaluate your options with clarity, so you can make well-informed decisions and harness all the opportunities that an exit can bring. We can show you a range of potential outcomes over time, the likelihood of meeting goals and sensitivities to risks—such as inflation, market drawdowns or concentrated positions. We also apply a historical lens, stress-testing allocations through past market crises while reviewing rolling returns and recovery times to identify vulnerabilities.

Descriptive audio

Maricé Brown: We’re doing a lot for entrepreneurs right now at the J.P. Morgan level — not only at the Private Bank, but I think the fact that we are present here in the U.K. from an Investment Banking perspective, a Commercial Banking perspective… we’re in a unique position to help those entrepreneurs, especially when they’re just starting, in thinking about raising money, exiting, but also planning for the future.

And so, I think that combo we provide to our clients, in terms of the types of advice on different fronts of their lives, is highly valuable for them in a place like the U.K., where a lot is happening right now. The promise here of growth, development and potential exits is really high, and we’re here to serve them along the way.

James Chilvers: We’ve had a presence in the U.K. for over 170 years, working with business, families and entrepreneurs from across the country. Our presence in Manchester, Edinburgh, Glasgow, London, Bournemouth — and the number of people we employ in the U.K. — demonstrates our commitment as an organisation to the U.K.

We are there on the whole journey for our U.K. entrepreneurial clients and families as they think through the meaning and purpose of their business and wealth is, and how they’re going to build a strategy around succession to that business, or indeed, potentially an exit from that business in the medium to long term.

MB: There’s another thing that comes up in a lot of these conversations with families, especially when it’s first-time entrepreneurs selling their businesses and going thorough exit, which is: how much is enough?

JC: I think it’s really interesting. As we speak to entrepreneurs from around the country, so few people know what their number is. So what is the amount that our family needs as a safety net or an iron reserve to continue to meet our lifestyle needs for the rest of our days? And that’s a piece of work that we regularly help and support our clients in identifying.

MB: And that’s the power of a global firm at the end of the day. When we think about bringing global resources to a local market, I think that’s one of the benefits of working with a bank like us.

JC: We are very keen to ensure that our entrepreneurial clients are surrounded by the right kinds of advisors, and often we will be asked to help them discover who those might be. We have a fantastic network of third-party intermediaries — lawyers, accountants, and others — who can be introduced to our entrepreneurial clients and support them on that journey. To ensure that they’re taking the sort of, right independent tax advice as they approach a potential business exit is absolutely crucial, and we can really help them surround themselves with the right team there.

We live in an age where things are changing fast, and not every next generation wants to take over the family business. One of the things that many business owners will think about is what legacy are they going to leave behind. What are the values that underpin the business that we founded and have grown? And what is our vision and purpose for that business, and maybe the wealth that could be generated from it?