My child wants to take over the business but has no funds: what to do

A structural problem, not a personal one

The problem is neither the quality of the buyer nor that of the business. It is purely financial. Taking over an SME involves significant amounts, often between one and five million euros. Even in reasonable cases, this remains out of reach for an individual without capital.

Banks demand a substantial personal contribution and guarantees, which heavily exposes the buyer. The risk becomes disproportionate to their situation.

For their part, the business owner legitimately wants to realise the value of their company, the fruit of several decades of work. They can neither give away their business, nor take an excessive risk on payment of the price. Between these two realities, there is no bridge, and that is precisely where the transfer fails.

The limits of conventional solutions

Traditional tools were not designed to resolve this kind of situation. Bank financing, on its own, remains rigid and depends heavily on the initial contribution.

Investment funds pursue a logic of return and exit, rarely aligned with a family logic. Vendor financing (crédit-vendeur) can help, but it remains insufficient and shifts part of the risk onto the seller.

Preferential tax regimes, starting with the pacte Dutreil in France, lighten the cost of a transfer by gift. They do not, however, finance a buyout, and their holding-commitment conditions have to be prepared years in advance.

Building a tailored financing structure

The principle is simple: if the transfer makes sense on a human and economic level, then it must be made possible financially. Rather than looking for a single solution, the aim is to build a structure combining several levers: external financing, banking partners, vendor financing, price supplements indexed to performance.

The objective is twofold. Reduce as far as possible the initial contribution asked of the buyer. Secure payment of the price for the seller. This structuring work turns a transaction perceived as impossible into a financeable one.

One last element is decisive: the alignment of interests. An investor who stands alongside the buyer shares the risk, lends credibility to the transaction with the banks and supports the buyer through the key stages.

An order of magnitude to fix ideas: in a balanced structure, the family buyer's contribution represents a minority fraction of the price, the rest being split between equity brought in by the investor, bank debt and a deferred portion of the price. It is the combination that makes the transaction possible, not any one of these elements taken in isolation.

Rethinking the timing of the transfer

One frequent mistake is wanting to structure an immediate one hundred per cent buyout. In a family logic, this is neither necessary nor optimal.

Gradual transfer mechanisms allow the buyer to build up their stake over time, in line with the company's performance. Part of the price can be indexed to future results and financed by the cash flows generated. In other words, the business itself helps to finance its own transfer.

This change of timescale reduces the initial financial pressure and secures operational continuity.

What it changes in practice

In this framework, the sentence "he has no money" changes in nature. It no longer represents a definitive blockage, but a constraint to be built into the structuring.

The question is no longer whether the buyer can pay immediately, but how to organise the financing over time, in a way that is balanced for all parties. We move from a logic of immediate capacity to a logic of trajectory.

Behind these transactions, there is far more than a financial arrangement. It is about preserving businesses, teams and know-how, and avoiding forced sales to outside players for lack of a solution.