HVBF Quarterly Meeting - Financial Roundtable
Thursday, October 16, 2008, 8:00 - 10:00 AM

Dear HVBF Members and Guests,

I want to thank all those who attended our most recent Financial Performance Roundtable event on Oct. 16th regarding Succession Planning for Business Owners. Many thanks also to the Grand Lodge at Bonnie Blink for hosting the event and to Brooks-Huff Tire & Auto Centers for sponsoring the breakfast!

I hope you all enjoyed our panel discussion and took away some valuable insights on some forward thinking succession planning strategies. For those of who could not be with us, here is a brief recap of the morning’s discussion:

Brian Gracie and I of Heritage Financial Consultants kicked off the morning with a discussion of the implications to our workforce of the baby boom generation transferring businesses. We also discussed success rates of businesses as they pass from generation to the next. Finally, we discussed several of the types of buy-sell agreements and various ways to fund buy-sell agreements including life insurance and disability insurance.

Sherri Thomas and Bradley Troy from First Financial Group and Content McLaughlin from Tydings & Rosenberg followed with a discussion of combining charitable intent with succession planning. Many business owners are not familiar with the benefits of using a Charitable Remainder Trust or other charitable gifting strategies to transfer a business. Our panelists described several tax-efficient strategies that benefit for both the business owner and the favored charity.

Angelo Poletis from SC&H’s Tax & Advisory Services followed with a review of some of the tax ramifications and potential pitfalls of transferring a business. With proper planning and design many of these potential pitfalls can be avoided.

Thanks to all our expert panelists for their time and valuable insights on Succession Planning for Business Owners. We closed our event with a brief Q&A and discussion session.

The Financial Performance Roundtable will be holding events on a quarterly basis. If you have an idea or suggestion for a future roundtable, please feel free to share your thoughts and ideas directly with me.

Dennis G. Carter, Jr., CMFC, CFP®
HVBF Financial Roundtable Chairman
Financial Planner
Heritage Financial Consultants, LLC
410-771-5685
dennis.carter@lfg.com