In recent years, Williams Coulson began to expand its transactional practice, providing high-level assistance to closely-held and family owned businesses. The common element in each transaction has been the integration of transaction planning with forward-looking personal planning, often providing immediate tax savings and protection, as well as providing tax and asset protection benefits for multiple generations.
Recent notable transactions include:
Sale of a leading financial services company to a strategic buyer. The transaction involved significant charitable planning, resulting in several hundred million dollars being available for charitable purposes.
Sale of a specialized industrial materials company to a Fortune 500 buyer. The transaction involved innovative trust planning, providing multiple benefits to the former owners and their families.
Assisted a client in a Dutch auction tender offer, including a loan facility in excess of $100,000,000 to finance a stock repurchase.
Tax planning relating to the organization of a significant venture capital fund. The project also involved innovative ownership planning for the interests of the fund’s principals.
Sale of a well-known local entertainment company. Because of previous planning done by our firm, the sale proceeds went to a tax-advantaged, trust-owned vehicle for the benefit of current and future generations.
Numerous sales and acquisitions of buildings and other real estate for local and out-of-town buyers. Many of these transactions involved structures to provide tax advantages, inter-generational planning, or privacy advantages.
Continued our practice of providing assistance to executives of major companies, including negotiation of an exit package for an executive whose company had been recently acquired by a venture fund. This transaction involved freeing-up significant equity stranded in the venture capital acquisition and avoided a risky valuation determination.
Sale of a well-known retail company with multiple locations. This transaction involved significant planning regarding retail locations, and post-sale reuse of certain locations.
Acquisition of a division of a foreign company by its managers, using trust structures designed to benefit the management investors and their families.
Design and implementation of numerous phantom stock and other innovative employee benefit programs in preparation for potential sales of businesses. These transactions often involved tax-advantaged treatment for employers, employees or both, meeting the clients’ needs in light of recently enacted changes in law.
Successfully defended substantial claims against individual fiduciaries for losses arising in connection with their investment management.
Successfully assisted individual trust beneficiaries in their efforts to remove and replace corporate trustees.
Where a client trustee’s interpretation of certain language in a trust agreement was challenged by a trust beneficiary (potentially subjecting the trustee to significant liability), we successfully demonstrated that the trustee’s interpretation was correct.
Successfully defended the fees charged by corporate fiduciaries when acting as trustees and guardians.
Litigated closely held business and preliminary injunction issues in the Court of Common Pleas and Superior Court; participated in redemption of closely held stock.