Bagnalls is a sixth generation family business, a national painting contractor managing commercial, industrial and highly decorative contracts throughout the UK. Two members of the fifth generation now work within the business. One is Stephen Bagnall, the Group Managing Director. The other is Ellie Jobes, the Group People Director. In addition, there are three members of the sixth generation working int the business too: Oliver Dyson is the Group Finance Director, Hermione B

For family business owners, divorce or the dissolution of a civil partnership is rarely just a personal matter. It can have far-reaching implications for the family, the business, employees, future succession plans and long-term wealth preservation.

Family business has always liked to think of itself as a meritocracy of blood and belonging. Ownership, involvement and eventually leadership are supposed to flow naturally through the generations. Yet for many women born into these enterprises, that flow has a well documented habit of stopping just short of the top job. The glass ceiling, a phrase coined for the corporate world, turns out to describe something distinctly familiar in the family business world too. What Do We

There is a particular kind of pressure that comes with inheriting a family business as a daughter. It is not the pressure of acquisition or ambition. It is something quieter, more complex, and considerably harder to talk about. It is the pressure of proximity: of taking over something that is not just a commercial enterprise but a life's work, a source of identity, and in many cases the thing that shaped your entire childhood, for someone who is still in the room. Most leader

Nearly a century of Lancashire cheesemaking, tested by fire and emerging stronger. On the evening of Monday, November 6, 2023, Matthew Hall was fast asleep when his mother began throwing stones at his bedroom window. Outside, the Lancashire night sky was lit not by stars, but by a blaze consuming Butlers Farmhouse Cheeses’ office and packing site in Longridge. "Mum told me there was a fire," he recalls. "That word can mean so much, can't it? You light your fire in your house;

Spanning nearly eight decades and three generations of the Wharton family, the story of Whartons Roses is one of determination, craft, and an enduring passion for the world's most beloved flower.

They may rarely make the headlines reserved for Germany's largest listed corporations, but the country's family firms remain, in every meaningful sense, the engine room of the German economy.

Family businesses have been the foundation of commerce for centuries, contributing significantly to economic growth and development.

For decades, family business owners across the UK could plan their succession around a simple assumption. Build the business, hold the shares, and pass them on at death largely free of inheritance tax. That assumption ended on 6 April 2026. The reform to Business Property Relief and Agricultural Property Relief has fundamentally altered the maths of succession. Qualifying business and agricultural assets now receive full relief only up to £2.5 million per individual, or £5 mi

One of the clearest patterns among leaders who step down successfully is that they begin investing in interests, relationships and activities outside the business well in advance.

A change of Prime Minister, an unsettled tax outlook and a steady drumbeat of speculation about inheritance tax, business property relief and wider reform have left plenty of family business owners wondering whether this is the moment to accelerate succession, delay it, or simply hold their nerve.

Some of the most outwardly confident leaders in family business privately admit to feeling like they are carrying the weight of the company, and the family, almost entirely on their own.

Successful family firms look closely at what actually makes a family business different, and turned those qualities into a genuine source of competitive advantage rather than something to play down.

There is a particular tension that sits at the heart of many multigenerational family businesses — one that is rarely spoken about openly, but that shapes some of the most consequential decisions a family will ever make.

There is a quiet revolution happening in the world of business — and it has been happening for centuries. It does not make the front pages as often as the latest tech unicorn or billion-pound corporate merger, but its impact is undeniable.

Research indicates that the gap between planning and action is the single greatest obstacle to sustainable growth. How can leaders identify the early warning signs and overcome this barrier?

Every family business runs on two systems at once. There is the business itself, with its customers, its numbers and its decisions, and there is the family behind it, with its history, its loyalties and its unspoken expectations.

There comes a point in the life of many family businesses when the rules that have always lived in people's heads need to be written down.

The history of Gucci is a tragedy of a very particular kind, the kind that should make every business family stop and think.

Bringing in an external leader is one of the most consequential choices a family business can make