The Italian market of corporate services for family businesses (FBs) is featured by the presence of players so different one from another but with the same business strategy: being specialized in one core service[1], but offering a set of accessory services to be integrated with the core. And according to it, these players can be classified in^[2]:

• Succession Strategists. This class of players includes consulting firms and boutiques specialized in strategy consulting, that are offering both planning services for succession and services for succession process monitoring. The most of them are spin-off of the most well-known strategy consulting firms or small firms moving around the most important national and international universities with which they collaborate;
• Wealth Managers. This class of players includes private bankers, family offices^[3] and legal offices that are moving to evolved accessory services even if specialized respectively in: investment management, private patrimony protection, legal support. In particular, private bankers are developing consulting services^[4] in order to play the role of families’ personal advisors on the enhancement of value and tax treatment of their long-term investments^[5], supposed families’ need^[6] and their portfolio risk profile. In the meantime, on the one hand, family offices are enlarging their product range to services for accounting and reporting optimization, real estate management, tax planning and suppliers selection; on the other hand, legal offices are proposing solutions for arranging FBs’ ownership from generation to generation and for overcoming conflicts among the shareholders;
• Financial Advisors. This class of players includes the Corporate Finance Divisions of both local banks and local BIG4 headquarters, and independent advisors that are all targeting to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) by proposing themselves as stable members of the consulting team^[7] that is usually involved in the succession management in FBs, but focused on suggesting strategies for FB’s growth. In fact, these players’ common thinking is that after the credit crunch the SMEs’ demand for restructuring operations is close to turn into a strong demand for acquisitions in 2010;
• Leadership Developers. This class of players includes head hunting firms, boutiques and training labs^[8] that are respectively specialized in talents scouting, organization design and personal development. These players are converging to the same offering: (i) potential successors’ empowerment, from the first working experiences to the eventual selection as FB’s leader; (ii) FBs’ opening to external managers, from the early scouting to the following intermediation with the owner-families; (iii) FBs’ re-organization according to their lifecycle phase; (iv) FBs’ competences management, from the periodical assessment of the key employees’ profile to the following set-up of updating courses. This kind of offering implies that players change their roles according to the specific service: (i) tutors of younger generations; (ii) HR specialists directly staffed to the FBs’ leader; (iii) organization consultants.

Each class is about 40-50 players in average, provided the new entrants and some incumbents’ defections from 2004 to 2009: they guarantee higher country coverage and lower project prices if compared to 2007, but the 78% of Italian FBs still prefers not to involve these players, especially in the succession management^[9]; furthermore, the most of the residual 22% goes for involving the above-mentioned players only when severe succession problems have occurred. In other words, the historical trend persists in spite of the players’ trial of improvement: at the moment a FB remains an affair of family.