What matters in succession — beyond the price

A company name has been charged with reliability over years. Customers, suppliers and the region attach an expectation to it. Overwrite it overnight, and more is lost than a wordmark — the capital held within it is lost.

That is why the first question in a handover is not what the business costs, but what remains of what makes it what it is.

Those who have carried the business know it better than any due-diligence review. A handover that begins by cutting people destroys exactly the knowledge it meant to buy.

Continuity in the team is not a concession to the past, but the precondition for the future to work at all.

That price is not everything is easy to say when you are not the one selling. The advisory statistics of the German chambers of industry and commerce show how often it becomes the actual obstacle: for 36 per cent of the former owners they advise, the chambers consider the price demanded excessive. For 28 per cent, letting go emotionally is hard. The DIHK notes that the two frequently condition one another — the price becomes a placeholder for something money cannot settle.

Almost a quarter delay the handover in the hope of achieving a higher price later. That waiting has a price of its own, which the chambers also observe: owners expecting a handover wind down investment and leave digitalisation and renewal to their successor. The consequence is that the business becomes less attractive — and the task for the successor grows.

Waiting for the better price often lowers it. That is not an opinion but the observation of those who conduct some ten thousand such conversations a year.

The report also names what a match actually depends on: the sector, the ideas about the company's future, the purchase price, the financing — and ultimately the chemistry between the person handing over and the person taking on. Price is one of five, and the only one you can calculate.

Before anything is changed, it should be understood. What has grown over years usually has a reason — even where it looks outdated from the outside. Listen first, then decide.

A fair price matters. But it is the result of a good handover, not its purpose.

DIHK-Report Unternehmensnachfolge 2025, Association of German Chambers of Industry and Commerce. Source of the 36 per cent excessive price demands, the 28 per cent struggling to let go, the waiting quarter, and the five points a match depends on. Available at dihk.de.

The values come from the chambers' advisory work, not from a representative sample of the Mittelstand. They describe what advisers see in their conversations — anyone who never approaches a chamber does not appear in them. The DIHK also reports these values as stable across several years.