Private Client Services
A selective practice in succession and personal planning for business owners, founders, and executives whose planning is closely connected to business ownership, liquidity events, or complex holdings.
Most personal planning treats a business as one asset among many. For owners whose wealth is concentrated in a company, the plan has to start with the business and work outward. Crossbridge advises on the personal-side planning that accompanies substantial business interests: ownership succession, planning around liquidity events, and the long-range structuring questions that arise where personal wealth and a closely held business intersect. Engagements are taken on where the circumstances warrant a tailored approach rather than a standardized package.
Each engagement is led by the Principal Attorney, drawing on major law firm training, Wall Street deal and financial structuring experience, business consulting, and senior in-house counsel perspective at a Fortune 100 financial institution. That background includes familiarity with how buyers value a business, and it is particularly suited to clients whose personal planning is intertwined with closely held businesses, concentrated positions, or cross-border interests.
Areas of Focus
Crossbridge advises on private client matters, including:
Pre-sale and liquidity planning: planning ahead of a sale, recapitalization, or other liquidity event, including pre-transaction structuring and the personal planning consequences of a significant change in the form or concentration of a client’s wealth, coordinated with the transaction itself where Crossbridge is also handling the deal.
Business and ownership succession: coordinating personal planning with closely held business interests, including ownership transition, buy-sell arrangements, and the interplay between a founder's personal plan and the company's governance.
Long-range ownership and transfer structuring: entity and holding structures that support the durable, tax-aware transfer of business interests and substantial assets across generations, designed in coordination with the client's tax advisors.
Wealth governance and complex holdings: structuring for concentrated positions, multiple entities, and layered ownership, including successor designation, decision-making frameworks, and the governance questions that accompany substantial or complex assets.
How We Engage
Private client engagements are senior-led and handled with discretion.
Engagements typically begin with a planning discussion that surfaces the client's objectives, ownership and family circumstances, and asset profile before any documents are drafted, so the structure reflects how the client intends their affairs to be managed over time, not a template. The Principal Attorney coordinates with the client's accountants, financial advisors, and other counsel where their input is required.
What Clients Receive
A Private Client Services engagement may include:
Planning design and structuring that aligns the client's objectives with appropriate entity, holding, and transfer structures, accounting for tax considerations and long-range goals.
Drafting of the governing documents that implement the plan, including entity, ownership, and transfer documents and the supporting instruments that complete a coherent structure.
Coordination with the client's advisors, including accountants, wealth managers, and specialist counsel, to maintain a single coherent plan across legal, tax, and financial dimensions.
Periodic review and implementation support, including implementation guidance, document updates as circumstances change, and counsel on the practical mechanics of maintaining the plan.
Begin the conversation.
If your circumstances call for a considered approach to succession and personal planning, Crossbridge would welcome the conversation.