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Business transmission is going to be a key issue in the coming years. This topic is an ongoing matter on European, national and regional level, especially because of the ageing independents (Guyot & Van Cutsem, 2010). By 2025, about 100,000 jobs in Belgium will potentially be affected by the transfer of businesses due to the age of their leaders. The success of this type of operation is vital for the preservation of our economic structure. Even though the survival rate of transmitted companies is substantially higher than that of a newly created company; we notice nowadays, that over 50% of the companies intending to transfer their business in the next two years, still don’t have any potential buyer in prospect (Counot & Mulic, 2004).

On a daily basis, enterprises face numerous and diverse risks. It is essential to identify the threats in each life phase of the organization in order to be able to cope with them. In the course of this thesis, we will discuss the risks associated with a particular practice, which was rather less analysed in literature until today; the transmission of a business. Most existing studies generally treat the business transmission and takeover separately. Our approach however depicts the incremental process of both points of view. The aim of this research is to determine the risks related to the different phases of a business transmission project in order to develop a tool preventively assessing the danger of the situation the transferor and/or buyer could be exposed to. In this way, the emergence of those specific risks should be avoided and thus ensure the sustainability of the company. Consequently, a qualitative study was conducted through four professionals in the art of transmission, six individuals having sold their business and eight ones having taken over a business. We analysed the existing literature in this field to expand our knowledge about the emergence of risks in a business transmission/ takeover. The reasons regularly rely on relational and emotional problems affecting, in the medium term, negatively on the financial health of the company. The results of our survey show that the main problems are, among many others, the personality of the vendor, the staff resistance, the knowledge transfer and/or a non-competitive production equipment. Knowing that it is impossible to predict every risk inherent to a business transmission project, the actual objective of this thesis is to detect and present the most commonly encountered risks.

Transmission d'entreprises, reprise d'entreprises, évaluation des risques --- Sciences économiques & de gestion > Stratégie & innovation