The years that have just passed will remain in the memory of each of us as an unprecedented period. A virus, Covid-19, has put the whole world in crisis and still today after several months we ask ourselves many questions that are answered only in a state of uncertainty that does not cease to exist. A period of social and economic crisis that has produced damage and suffering, where the gap between poverty and wealth is increasingly wide and probably impossible to bridge. Now, therefore, it is important to understand how much this experience today will be useful for the future.
In this new model of society we are approaching, the theme linked to the assets of a family business and its future generational change will certainly be a topic that will concern us more and more closely.
The last century has seen a growth in economic and financial possibilities and with them a growth in personal and family assets, real estate and movable assets in the sense of collecting. Today we are faced with the need – also given the need to create greater security for the future – for the new generations to be able to access family assets in young adulthood as there will be an ever increasing importance of addressing contemporary insecurities and access opportunities. The rise of the wealth economy is central to changing life chances between generations at a societal level (and potentially encourages generational conflict at this level) but at the same time increases the importance of intergenerational solidarity and transfers within of the family.
In the face of a number of family businesses that have cultivated the maintenance of assets as entities of an autonomous culture within the family itself, there are many others with a more recent history that find themselves still unable to develop a succession process, continually postponing decisions. While this passage would immediately require lucid planning and above all accompanied by a mediation that allows to control and exclude any form of irrational emotionality that often accompanies this passage, as it would jeopardize the success of the operation. In fact, it is a delicate and critical phase of corporate life that involves a small family business where the emotional and relational relationship between parents and children or closest heirs must be managed in the best possible way. To this end, the involvement of third parties and external consultants in this phase allows for the integration of knowledge and for having an objective assessment aimed also at overcoming and resolving the intergenerational emotional barriers that often affect generational turnover.
Specifically, there are many family assets that in the capital we also find artistic and cultural assets accumulated over the years for passion or investment but which are however placed in an area not valued for the purpose of heritage but often as simple collector's items, but which at the moment of the succession also become grounds for litigation between heirs. Therefore we should increasingly talk about the care and prevention of a heritage entrusted to third parties capable of placing the right mediation before arriving at a long and often penalizing dispute for all parties.
Nonetheless, the legal assistance sector will also lead professionals working in this sector to make a great reflection in order to understand the future scenarios to be managed, starting from conflicts to asset management according to generational changes that today more than before need all-round assistance.
According to the lawyer Giovanni Caroli, civilian, who has been dealing with conflicts and resolutions also in the generational field for years, the traditional orientation in the choice between the search for conciliation of disputes and the pursuit of contentious solutions alongside has recently undergone a significant change in Italian culture.
Do you mean that there will be new rules and expectations?
In a now globalized world, ready to implement practices and solutions adopted in the context of the most diverse cultures, the pandemic has imposed a sudden distortion of the interests at stake, thereby also demanding new rules and expectations.
At this point should we imagine that this change will also change times and methods?
Timings have changed, problems that were unimaginable until recently have arisen, the solution of which is requiring a continuous search for new practices and rules. Legal conflicts are multiplying and their overcoming will force the legal professions to face them with new methods, seeking above all a more thoughtful (compared to the past and the country's cultural traditions), use - above all in a preventive way - of conciliatory paths in order to make the maintenance of acquired relationships compatible with faster and more flexible protection solutions.
It will therefore change the traditional forensic culture that could notWill he have to adapt to changes in society?
The rooting of traditional litigation tools in conflict solutions (which, in turn, are growing rapidly) will have to be the last resort and will impose on the forensic class a new and more ductile culture of "preventive strategy" and a different form of conciliation from that carried forward until today. All this will facilitate the management of one's interests with reference not only to the problems that emerge from time to time, but also to future ones, made possible by the changing globalized society.
You live and work in a region, Puglia, which in the last ten years has had a decidedly important social and economic development that has allowed many families to build real estate assets and more. This suggests that yesFollowing your speech, that there is an increasing need for more complex and international assistance?
Surely. As a lawyer, I foresee a constant growth of family disputes for succession purposes, which could well be resolved in advance. The reality of Puglia, like other places in Italy where the quality of life is an asset to be protected, has led many foreigners to make considerable investments in new hospitality realities, causing new capital to flow into the area which must be managed in the best possible way through a preventive legal protection, especially in the negotiation and accounting and administrative management phase.
She who has always been an art lover would translate the enhancement of cultural heritage, works of art, books, various objects and more collected over time by families.
Generally the collector does not calculate the valorisation of the asset because he is initially led to enjoy his passion, he accumulates and enjoys the purchased asset, not considering it as a safe haven as land or a house could be. Yet we well know that art is a true asset class which can also give good satisfaction from an investment point of view. This concept is very clear to the art collector, but it is not perceived by those who collect alone and for themselves. And here the problem arises precisely in the generational change when the litigation increases due to a complex emotionality linked to memories or promises made verbally.
What would you recommend for sallook at the future of the new generations.
It is now certain that we are faced with complex experiences which must make us think seriously, because change has not only occurred but has started a one-way street to which we should adapt quickly and all assets will be managed preventively to allow future generations to be able to enjoy the sacrifices made by the previous ones.
The interview is edited by Marika Lion
