Succession Planning in Asian Enterprising Families

Annie Koh discusses succession planning in Asian culture and the need to begin planning earlier.

You know it’s quite amazing, most Asian families hate the idea of planning for your retirement because you would like not consider as auspicious, because it’s almost like planning for your own death. And you can be retiring, it’s not about you dying, but most families defer this decision. Succession planning in many Asian families are not done early enough. You actually need close to about 10 years of preparation for succession and most people leave it to the last minute. Either you fall ill and you quickly need a replacement successor, or you had to have a merger and acquisition, someone wanted to buy into the business and then there’s a dilution factor and you decided that since nobody is a good successor let me just sell the business. So succession should be taken quite seriously. Asian families need to plan for it early enough. I would say even when you are in your 45-50, still in health, you should be planning to step down and looking at stepping down when you are 60-65.