The Business Owner's Roadmap: Navigating Tax, Estate, and Deal Considerations Pre-Transaction
Presented By: AB Bernstein / Gray Reed
M&A transactions require more than just negotiating a price—they need careful structure for the deal to protect wealth, minimize tax impact, and ensure a smooth transition. This panel brings together experts in M&A law, tax strategy, and estate planning to walk business owners through the critical steps of pre-transaction planning before and after the LOI. Using a real-world case study, they’ll illustrate how strategic coordination between advisors can maximize value and avoid costly missteps.
Moderator:
Principal
AB Bernstein
I’m What Happens Next...After You Achieve Wealth.
My clients are experts in how they’ve achieved their wealth; I am an expert in helping them find meaning, opportunity and security with what they’ve earned. I help them navigate life’s transitions and connecting them to resources and solutions.
Tell me about an example of how you helped someone find purpose in their wealth.
When working with any client, I recognize that priorities, family dynamics and even the identity of the long-term wealth stewards will change over time. All of these variables are top of mind as I prioritize how to most effectively meet my clients’ trust above all else. By integrating myself into the fabric of these families, I am able to connect with them on a personal and meaningful level. These trusting relationships are the foundation, and most fulfilling part, of my work. It is a significant responsibility, and professional honor, to be invited by my clients to shape decisions that will affect my their lives and those of future generations.
Tell me about the types of clients you work with.
My focus is on the families of self-made business owners and senior business executives. I particularly enjoy working on the “squishy stuff,” such as familial and philosophical complexities, that cannot be solved through portfolio analytics/allocation advice. These families count on my unvarnished advice to help them make the best financial decisions and to create a reasonable and completely customized plan. My goal is to help them feel as good as possible about what they have, as we work to navigate all of their options.
Panelists:
Partner, Tax Practice Group Leader
Gray Reed
Dan Kroll serves as Gray Reed's Tax Practice Group Leader. Dan is a corporate and tax lawyer with more than two decades of broad experience. He assists clients with diverse needs ranging from inbound and outbound federal income tax planning, to partnership and corporate law matters, to structuring and business issues impacting the real estate industry from the perspective of developers, middle-market businesses and high-net-worth individuals. Whether his client is a global developer negotiating a complex property acquisition or a family partnership selling its business to a private equity fund, Dan focuses on learning each client’s unique objectives and designing the best strategy to close the deal and maximize tax efficiency.
Dan advises clients across many industries on the federal income tax consequences of a variety of transactions, including joint venture formations, acquisitions, operations and dispositions. He is also experienced in resolving the tax issues arising in structuring drilling partnerships and maximizing tax benefits to both the drillers and the investors. Some of Dan’s unique practice niches include creating key employee compensation initiatives using profits interests and phantom equity, and structuring investments by tax-exempt investors to minimize or avoid unrelated business taxable income (UBTI).
Dan has negotiated and structured numerous private equity transactions, including representation of both buyers and sellers in deals involving master limited partnerships (MLPs) and private equity funds. He has handled an increasing number of private equity acquisitions from the seller’s perspective, advising business owners on appropriate sales price, tax incentives, rollover equity, employment agreements and much more.