The first logical step in solving debt problems • 03.17.10
The first step in any family succession plan is to choose the appropriate heir for the business. Where there is only one heir, it is necessary to decide whether he or she wishes to, and is capable of, taking over the business. If there is more than one suitable candidate, it is necessary to decide which one will be chosen. The factors to consider include business aptitude and management potential. Potential is more important than experience, because you can groom your heir for the role as owner/manager over an extended period.
In theory, the steps involved and the logic employed in choosing the appropriate heir should be similar to those involved in choosing the best CEO for the business, or the lead manager in a management buy-out: that is, the heir you choose should be the one most capable of running the business successfully when you leave. In practice, however, the choice may be made for various personal and family related reasons, rather than on solid business-based grounds.
Where there is only one heir (or only one heir who is interested in taking over the business), obviously it might still be a mistake, on purely business grounds, to hand over the business to that heir. But, if this is to be the case, your task is to make the best of a dubious decision and to prepare this person as best you can for the role of running the business.
As we have pointed out for short-term spreads expected recovery value may be too high for short-term liabilities due to the assumptions of the model. Commercial implementations of the original structural model are more sophisticated, in order to produce more accurate spreads, default probabilities and recovery rates even for short time horizons. While in pure diffusion models with a barrier overnight debt is quasi-riskless, the introduction of a jump process captures the fact that default could be triggered by a sudden, unexpected event. Thus, the jump process is appropriate to model the possibility of the firm defaulting instantaneously due to the arrival of negative information with respect to, for example, litigation or fraud.