Your next career opportunity may not have a job description. But a purchase price.
An executive who is reorienting professionally usually begins the search with familiar categories. Industry. Function. Company size. Area of responsibility. The next role should match their experience and allow a meaningful step forward.
Let us now add one possibility to this picture: the role being sought consists of taking over and continuing an existing company.
For a leader with operational experience, this thought can feel unfamiliar. For years they have helped shape companies, led teams and been accountable for results. Ownership was someone else’s business. A career reorientation offers the occasion to examine this boundary consciously as well.
In Switzerland there is a concrete economic background for this.
A third are planning to hand over ownership
The first part of the 2026 succession study by UBS and the Center for Family Business at the University of St.Gallen is based on a survey of 401 Swiss SME owners in September 2025. 32 per cent were planning to transfer ownership of their company, or parts of it, within the following five years. The answers were weighted by industry and company size. [1]
These are intentions, not transactions that have already been agreed. The figure also includes handovers within the family and partial transfers. It therefore cannot be translated into a list of companies for sale or into a number of vacant managing director positions.
But it does provide a good reason to get to know succession better as a possible career direction.
The fourth sub-study looks in depth at the views of 261 owners of Swiss family SMEs. Around two thirds could imagine a handover outside the family, in terms of ownership and/or management. The openness therefore extends beyond an outright sale. [2]
For executives, this opens up a spectrum of possible constellations: operational management under continued family ownership, entry with a shareholding, or a takeover by management coming from outside. The latter is known as a management buy-in. Which variant comes into question at all depends on the owners’ intentions and on one’s own possibilities.
Your experience takes on a different task
This makes the career question more concrete. You would have to be able to imagine taking responsibility for exactly this business over several years: understanding its customers, leading its employees and shaping its economic development.
An experienced head of operations could, for example, examine whether her expertise in improving delivery capability and production processes suits an industrial SME. A head of sales could investigate how well he understands the customers and sales channels of a specialised supplier. Such considerations describe a possible fit to begin with. They replace neither the due diligence on the company nor the proof that the business model is economically viable.
The way of working also belongs in this assessment. Anyone who has so far worked with large specialist departments should take a close look at day-to-day life with a smaller team. Which tasks would you have to take on yourself? What support would be available? Which decisions would suddenly land on your own desk at the same time?
The scope of a previous mandate answers these questions only in part. What becomes decisive is whether you actually want to do, and can do, the future work.
Four questions before the first takeover project
Do I want to run and own the company? Ownership deserves an answer of its own. A wish for more room to shape things can also be fulfilled in an employed managing director role. Anyone considering a takeover should test their enjoyment of the specific business and imagine carrying it through its difficult years as well. Anger at the last employer is not enough as a motivation.
Where would my experience make a comprehensible contribution? Before searching, define what kind of company could suit you: industry, size, region, customer structure and operational requirements. Describe which tasks you master yourself and for which you would need support. This makes conversations with succession advisers easier and prevents every interesting sales presentation from becoming a new career goal.
What financial commitments can and do I want to take on? Purchase price, financing, investment needs and ongoing living costs must be considered together. In the fifth HSG/UBS sub-study, a retrospective by 87 successors on takeovers already completed, 39 per cent reported that the financing had placed a heavy personal financial burden on them. The sample contains successful handovers and allows no statement about all takeover attempts that were started. [3]
For your own decision you need an independent valuation and careful financial, legal and tax due diligence by the appropriate specialists. A convincing company may be offered at a purchase price that does not fit your personal situation. This realisation is as much part of a good decision as agreeing to a viable project.
What would working with the previous owner look like? Discuss concrete situations: who decides on a key appointment? Who talks to important customers? What role does the previous owner keep, and for how long? The HSG describes letting go and clarifying roles as key challenges of succession. A handover therefore also needs a shared idea of how responsibility passes over in everyday life. [4]
First test the direction
The first sensible step is to develop a personal search profile. This includes the desired activity, the economic limits and the conditions under which ownership would come into question at all.
Conversations with experienced entrepreneurs and succession specialists can then help to test this idea against everyday reality. What does a typical week after the takeover look like? Which tasks were underestimated? What should have been clarified more precisely before joining?
Until this results in a viable option, the search for a suitable position can continue. This way both paths can be measured against the same personal goals. Anyone who concludes after careful examination that an employed leadership role suits them better has made an important decision.
For HR managers who accompany departing executives, this suggests a useful thought: a career assessment should also include the question of entrepreneurial ambitions. A CV mainly shows which roles someone has already held. It does not yet answer which form of responsibility would be right in future.
A possible next chapter
The Swiss succession question can be viewed from two perspectives. For today’s generation of owners, it is about the future of a company they have built. For an executive in reorientation, it may contain a task that has so far lain outside their search field.
Whether the two sides fit together is decided by a concrete business, by people and by viable conditions. Experience provides a foundation for this. The willingness to take on ownership and its consequences must be added to it.
Perhaps your next step leads into a new position. Perhaps it leads into responsibility for a company you co-own. A good career reorientation gives both possibilities the space they deserve.
At Grass & Partner, we accompany executives and senior managers in carefully assessing their experience, motivation and career options. If you would like to examine whether an employed leadership role or an entrepreneurial path suits your next chapter, we support you in this personal and professional assessment. Talk to us about your next perspective.
Learn moreSources
1. UBS / CFB-HSG (January 2026): “Unternehmensnachfolge in der Schweiz: Worum geht es?”, succession study 2026, part 1, in particular methodology and succession rate. Survey of 401 SME owners in September 2025.
2. UBS / CFB-HSG (2026): “Familienexterne Nachfolge – mehr als nur eine Notlösung”, part 4, in particular willingness to hand over outside the family. Survey of 261 owners of family SMEs.
3. UBS / CFB-HSG (2026): “Die Unternehmensnachfolge als Prozess verstehen”, part 5, in particular methodology and financing. Retrospective by 87 successors on takeovers already completed.
4. University of St.Gallen (28 May 2026): “Nachfolge: Generationenwechsel in Schweizer Familienunternehmen”.