Succession Challenges Shift to 'Human' Factors; Consulting Heavily Concentrated on Tax Accountants — Structural Issues in Professional Collaboration Highlighted —

Aoyama Zaisan Networks (Headquarters: Minato-ku, Tokyo; President and Representative Director: Masazumi Hasumi; hereinafter "the Company"), which provides asset consulting to individual investors and business owners, conducted a survey on business succession awareness targeting 369 family business owners nationwide (MacroMill monitor respondents; aged 20 or older, owners of companies with 10 or more employees, considering family internal succession). Respondents consisted of approximately 50% founders and 50% second-generation or later owners, primarily in their 50s and 60s.

Survey Summary The results revealed that 85.1% of respondents are actively considering business succession, with 48.4% stating that they have "decided on a successor and are proceeding with concrete preparations."

Regarding anxieties and challenges, a higher percentage of respondents expressed concerns in human-factor areas (68.8%), such as "successor training and management capability," compared to "assets/tax" areas (60.7%). In short, the biggest point of contention in business succession is "people."

Meanwhile, the most common contact for consultation regarding business succession was "advisory tax accountant/CPA" (36.3%). Furthermore, even when limited to "consultation outside of asset-related matters," consultation with "advisory tax accountants/CPAs" remained the highest at 26.3%, confirming that even with human and management issues ranked higher, consultation behavior remains concentrated on tax-sector professionals.

These results suggest a structural possibility that while business succession preparations are advancing, role-sharing and collaboration between the content of the challenges (human factors) and the contact for consultation (tax specialists) are not sufficiently progressing.