Christian Farstad - Vancouver ScotiaMcleod

If you’re self employed or the owner of a business, planning for business succession can be like writing a Will – you know it needs to be done, but you don’t really want to do it. However, like a Will, you’ve got to get it done before it’s too late. Leaving business succession to chance could allow someone else to decide what happens to your business, and potentially at significant cost. 

Here are some of the issues you need to consider when planning for the future of your business. 

Investors seeking income often limit their selection to bonds and give little or no consideration to preferred shares. They usually ignore preferreds simply because they don't know much about them.

Perhaps the easiest way to think of preferred shares is that they are shares which behave like a bond. A preferred share represents an ownership interest in a corporation, just as common stock does. But it also produces a reliable stream of income -- in the form of a pre-set dividend -- very much like the interest paid on a bond.