Manager's wealth strategy

Running a business and managing its assets are two activities that many managers treat separately, due to lack of time or because the advisors they call on work in silos.

Why does the manager need a specific wealth strategy?

A closely intertwined professional and personal heritage

For an SME manager, the business is not only a source of income: it often represents 60 to 80% of total net assets.

Added to this are the legal overlaps: partner's current account, personal guarantees given to your bank, unsuitable matrimonial regime - all potential bridges between professional creditors and your private assets.

The risks of a lack of heritage strategy

A manager without a formalized wealth strategy makes decisions by default.

The cost of financial inaction is not abstract: it is measured in millions of euros over an entire entrepreneurial trajectory.

Optimize your executive remuneration and taxation

Arbitration of salary, dividends and employee savings

The most frequent question — and the most poorly handled — is that of the trade-off between salary and dividends.

As an illustration: a president of an SAS assimilated as an employee who pays himself €150,000 gross annually bears approximately €82,000 in combined employer and employee social security contributions, but validates a significant Agirc-Arrco pension and accesses additional pension coverage.

Employee savings is a third lever that is systematically under-exploited: a profit-sharing or participation agreement makes it possible to pay up to €30,000 per year and per beneficiary with an exemption from social charges and deductibility from the company's tax income.

Legal status and heritage impact

The choice between SAS, SARL and holding company is not only a governance choice: it is a heritage choice.

Protect your personal and family assets

Marital regime and separation of assets

The legal community regime subjects common property to debts contracted for the needs of everyday life, but personal guarantees signed by a single spouse in principle only bind their own property and their share in the common property.

Any change in matrimonial regime requires judicial approval if minor children are present, and must be anticipated well before a transfer or transmission.

Manager pension provision: incapacity, death, loss of activity

A manager who stops suddenly simultaneously deprives his household of income and his business of its operational engine.

The key man guarantee is a separate system, taken out by the company on the head of the manager: it pays capital to the company in the event of death or disability to compensate for the operating loss and finance recruitment or transfer.

Structuring via an asset holding company

Beyond the tax optimization of flows, the asset holding offers a progressive transmission framework.

Develop and diversify your assets during the growth phase

Professional and personal real estate: crossed strategies

Acquiring the walls of your professional premises is a classic manager's decision - but the method of ownership changes everything.

On the other hand, the SCI with the IS generates a potentially higher capital gain on resale (the depreciation depreciation deducted is reinstated), which requires a long-term projection before choosing.

Financial investments and excess cash management

An SME that generates €400,000 in current income and only distributes €150,000 of it leaves €250,000 sitting in a current account at 0.5%.

Tax-exempt investments adapted to the manager profile

The individual PER remains the most powerful tax exemption lever for a manager with a high IMR: each euro paid reduces taxable income up to the marginal bracket.

Prepare the transfer and sale of the business

Anticipating transmission: Dutreil pact and donation

Family transmission without preparation is one of the most significant destructions of value that a manager can suffer.

Combined with a donation in dismemberment of property - where the manager transfers bare ownership while retaining the usufruct and therefore the dividends - this mechanism makes it possible to transmit most of the capitalized value while retaining the income until retirement.

Business transfer: optimize capital gains taxation

Without anticipation, the capital gain on sale is subject to the PFU of 30% (12.8% IR + 17.2% social security contributions), with a surcharge of 4% beyond €250,000 of reference tax income - i.e. a charge of 34% effective for most SME transferors.

Two main mechanisms make it possible to reduce this burden.

The retirement allowance (article 150-0 D ter) offers a fixed reduction of €500,000 on the net capital gain, applicable only if the manager retires in the 24 months preceding or following the transfer and has held office for at least five years.

Reinvest after the sale: structuring post-entrepreneurial assets

The post-cession period is a phase for which few managers are really prepared.

Implementing your heritage strategy: the key steps

The global asset audit: the essential starting point

No serious strategy can be built without taking stock of the situation.

Surround yourself with the right experts

No single expert covers the entire wealth spectrum of a manager.

Review your strategy at each stage of the company's life

A wealth strategy constructed during the launch phase must be revisited at the time of each significant event: change of status or partners, reaching a threshold of results, birth of a child, modification of the matrimonial regime, first transfer project.