RSM Dahman partners with Eureka Financial to help family owned businesses

Family owned businesses form the majority of businesses in the region and in UAE. With the second and third generation starting to get active in the family businesses, the challenges of governance structure, succession planning and growing number of family members are just a few of the many challenges faced by family business owners. 'Managing the Family Enterprise' workshops, in partnership with Eureka Financial Ltd. and Habib Al Mulla Group, were organized to treatise these challenges in the Arab business world.

"We recognize the need for a multi-disciplinary approach and we hear the problems faced by our clients and by family businesses in the region. We felt a pressing need to address these issues and hence we have partnered with Eureka and brought in Bill Humphreys to spearhead the workshop and to educate the audience in UAE" said Mr. Dahman Awadh Dahman, Founding Partner of RSM Dahman.

Addressing some of these issues, Bill Humphreys, a renowned wealth manager, financial trainer and Managing Consultant at Eureka Financial Ltd. said, "Family businesses are complex systems involving three independent but overlapping sub-systems, family, business & ownership. The family businesses will become increasingly complex over time as the self-interests of the different stakeholders diverge."

"Conflict is inevitable and in fact patterns of conflict are becoming more and more predictable. Governance systems, planning and transparent communication are essential tools for any family business looking to endure beyond the first generation," Humphreys added.

Business advisors, in the past, focused on their own specific area of professional expertise; trusts, offshore companies, tax. This approach, in the present business world with complex needs and the wide range of self-interests and unprecedented financial times, is unlikely to be successful.

The 'Managing Family Enterprise' workshops were attended by leading first and second generation of family business owners in United Arab Emirates