The vast majority of business successions are made within a family. It is still often difficult to find a purchaser.
Succession still often poses a problem in small and medium-sized enterprises in Switzerland: approximately one SME in three disappears because it does not find a purchaser, according to the study "KMU Nachfolge - Quo Vadis?" by the KMU Next foundation. However, it constitutes an interesting alternative to the creation of a structure from zero: the survival rate after five years is 95% for transferred companies versus only 50% for new enterprises.
Almost 45% of enterprises are transferred within the same family (family buy-out), 25% to someone outside the company (management buy-in) and 30% to employees who are not family members (management buy-out), according to the "Company Succession in Practice" report published in June 2016 by Credit Suisse.