CBIA Launches New Program For Family-Owned Businesses

HARTFORD — Connecticut’s largest business organization recently launched an innovative new program designed to support and grow the state’s thousands of family-owned businesses.

The Connecticut Business & Industry Association’s Family Business Program, sponsored by First Niagara Bank, J.H. Cohn LLP, and Reid and Riege PC, offers business leaders a forum for discussing and solving problems such as succession planning, legislative issues, ethics, and more.

“Thousands of businesses in Connecticut are family run,” says CBIA economist Peter Gioia. “In reality, we’ve been consistently serving CBIA members that are family owned on a wide range of traditional business issues, but not necessarily with a focus on the unique elements that family ownership and/or management add to the equation.”

Although family-run businesses account for 50 percent of US gross domestic product and generate 60 percent of the country’s jobs, problems specific to family dynamics mean just 30 percent of family-owned businesses survive into a second generation.

“The program will provide Connecticut-based family businesses with the opportunity to brainstorm, network, and discuss both business and family issues with others who have ‘walked the walk’ of working in a family business,” says Mary Fitzgerald, president of Acme Wire Products Co., Inc, in Mystic.

“There are times when getting an outside perspective from someone in a similar dynamic can offer you a fresh insight that you might not have realized in your day-to-day family or business dealings. That applies to everyone, whether they are first-generation founders or second- or third-generation family members.”

The program will include three to four meetings a year. To ensure business leaders throughout the state have an opportunity to attend, the same topic will be discussed on different days in Hartford County, Fairfield County, and New London County.

Topics will include:

*Financial management

*Governance

*Leadership issues

*Building and preserving wealth

*Banking strategies

*Succession planning

*Legislative issues affecting family businesses

*Compensation strategies

*Evaluating performance

The program also will offer bimonthly e-newsletters, along with webinar offerings and referrals to experts for advice.

“The presidency of PMP Corporation came to me from a distant uncle, and I am in the process of transferring management and ownership to my son,” says Thomas McGee, president of PMP Corporation in Avon. “For us, the CBIA Family Business Program aids our understanding of the important tax and financial issues that may come into play for us.”

“Family-run businesses are the backbone of American commerce and industry,” says John Santa, president of Santa Consulting and former president of Santa Energy Corporation in Bridgeport. “The way in which they add the most value to their owners and community is when they intelligently navigate that vulnerable passage from generation to generation of ownership.”