Our values are close to those of the family offices among our clients. Our company is a human-scale, family-sized structure, and most of our clients are concerned with the preservation and growth of their wealth, family harmony, and a transgenerational vision.
Houdart A&C, chartered accountant and statutory auditor for family offices and their investments
Houdart A&C assists family offices in the management of the financial holdings they invest in, in operational sectors such as services, industry, real estate, finance, and investment banking.
Our clients are family offices, wealthy investors, and families who manage their assets through holding companies. They recognize themselves in our values and approach, and they have entrusted us, as their accountants, with the accounting, tax, social, and legal management of their targets. We are also appointed as statutory auditors for the investments of family offices with whom we have built a relationship of trust.
We are accustomed to providing extensive, personalized services, and offering the responsiveness and confidentiality expected by this type of clientele, in collaboration with the advisors, tax specialists, and lawyers who surround them.
Both our employees and partners are committed to maintaining the availability required by our clients. They appreciate finding shared values within our firm, whether we act as their chartered accountants or statutory auditors for their family office investments.
Beyond our mission, we provide personalized service, anticipate your needs, and inform you of social and tax regulatory changes inherent to your business sector in order to implement tailored solutions
As auditors, we adopt a constructive and flexible approach, relying on substantive tests but also, and above all, on the review of your various processes in collaboration with your teams. This approach allows us to build a trusted relationship with your teams and provide recommendations for continuous process improvement.
The growth of our firm in the field of accounting expertise and auditing relies on the technical support of a versatile team that receives regular trainings. Our partners, who are chartered accountants and statutory auditors, are dedicated to being close to you and available whenever you need them.
Tailored services and values for family offices
Personalized Support
We strive to provide services adapted to the needs of our clients. Without imposing any constraints, we align our working methods with the practices and procedures specific to your organization and team.
The human resources allocated and their profiles are customized to meet your needs. We can assist you in selecting management tools, providing guidance on accounting and tax technicalities, as well as conducting financial evaluations of targets.
Due to the diversity of our clientele, we are able to intervene on your financial assets, regardless of the various operational sectors and structures that characterize them.
Values close to those of your family office
Our company is a human-scale, family-sized structure, most of whose clients are concerned with the preservation and development of their heritage, family harmony and a transgenerational vision.
We do not disclose any information about our clients, regardless of their prestige, including those for whom we act as statutory auditors, despite the publication of our mandates. Our clientele highly values the culture of confidentiality regarding financial information and the decisions shared with us by our clients. Our IT architecture has been designed and developed to provide a high level of security for the information we hold.
We are convinced that the trust our customers place in us cannot be decreed, but must be earned through our ability to listen, respond quickly, be involved, and demonstrate technical expertise.
While our digital tools are powerful and collaborative, the close understanding of our clients and the quality of the relationships we maintain with them are paramount in our approach.
We work intelligently and constructively with all of your advisors: tax experts, wealth managers, investment bankers, lawyers, etc.
Multi-sector technical skills
We work with companies of all sizes, types and activities, including startups involved in the metaverse and NFT creation, family-owned industrial SMEs, subsidiaries of large corporations in renewable energy, tech product development, textiles, luxury goods, art, and more.
All of these structures encounter problems specific to their business sector and for which we support them effectively, thanks to the the diversity of sectors represented by our client base, whether they are innovative companies or companies with decades of existence. We assist them with issues such as the territoriality of VAT collected, compliance with sector-specific legal, accounting, and regulatory requirements (e.g., in real estate intermediation, fintech, regulated liberal professions, or healthcare), management of industrial property rights, as an opaque or transparent intermediary from the tax point of view when it comes to the digitization of services, capitalization of incurred development costs, and more.
As part of our accounting review and legal auditing services, respectively as a chartered accountant or statutory auditor, we provide our clients with technical expertise to anticipate questions, identify tax risks, assess social risks, carry out in-depth documentary research and propose solutions ready for implementation.
A wide range of services
In addition to our traditional missions as chartered accountants or family office auditors, which involve reviewing and certifying accounts, we also carry out evaluation and due diligence assignments. We possess technical expertise in many of the social and tax issues your family office may face.
Our missions as chartered accountants for family offices and their holdings
Accounting management
As part of our mission to keep or review the accounts of the holdings of your family office, beyond the preparation of financial statements, we assist you in implementing effective processes for retrieving accounting information and establishing effective internal controls to ensure the reliability of financial information, management and reporting tools that align with your operations and decision-making processes.
Tax management
We handle the preparation of regular and one-off tax returns for your holdings. We conduct a thorough analysis of the context and purpose of each of your projects in advance to identify tax issues, including VAT territoriality or eligibility for research tax credit (CIR). We support you in the event of tax audits and keep you informed of changes in tax legislation through regular updates as Finance Laws evolve.
Social management
Regarding social management, Houdart A&C has in-depth knowledge of all the collective agreements applicable to the different sectors of activity, thanks to the diverse range of activities our clients engage in.
We handle payroll processing for the employees of client companies. We assist with URSSAF checks, prepare social security declarations (DSN), and can handle employee salary transfers. We handle affiliations with relevant provident organizations according to your company’s branch of activity. In case of disputes with one or more employees, we provide advice and can connect you with a recommended lawyer in case of labour litigation.
Legal assistance
Our legal department offers support in both day-to-day and extraordinary legal matters that arise involved in running a company. This includes annual legal secretarial services, drafting certain legal documents, preparing minutes of ordinary and extraordinary general meetings, convening notices, handling amendments to the articles of association (transfer of a company’s registered office or its trade name), and managing formalities with the competent Commercial Court registry, TUP (Universal transfer of assets and liabilities), changes in corporate form, and more.
For complex operations involving the issuance of securities such as bonds convertible into shares, stock warrants, warrants for business creator’s shares, etc., as well as the drafting of shareholders’ agreements, we connect our clients with trusted specialized lawyers to ensure the smooth progress of the transaction.
Due diligence
When an opportunity for external growth arises, we can carry out an acquisition audit of the target, either as advisors or as auditors, prior to your decision.
Valuation
We perform company and goodwill valuation missions using commonly applied methods such net asset value, comparables (transactions and multiples), discounted cash flow (DCF) and specific sector-based approaches for certain regulated professions in particular.
Support for personal taxation
For entrepreneurs and family office members among our clients, we provide assistance with their personal tax declarations. We prepare your income tax returns in France, as well as your real estate wealth tax declaration.
We help you avoid the application of additional health contributions to your property income.
We assist you in choosing individual and group health and heavy risk insurance contracts. We ensure that the formalities for setting up the contracts cover the risk of tax and social security ajustements.
If necessary, we can assist you with your personal tax audits.
We have a significant network of professionals specializing in insurance brokerage, notary services, and lawyers specialized in social or tax matters, whom we can mobilize to complement our support.
Our missions to family offices as auditor of their holdings
Statutory audit and certification of accounts
We carry out the mission of statutory auditor of family office participations in strict compliance with the ethical and legal rules of independence and incompatibility. We implement a strict methodological approach and rely on the technical qualities of the teams and associates.
Ad hoc statutory audits, contribution audits, merger audits, transformation audits
We are responsive when we are called upon in the context of an operation requiring a statutory auditor’s report or an ad hoc statutory audit. The most common operations include capital increases with cancellation of preferential subscription rights (DPS), creation and issuance of preferred shares, capital release through set-off against a certain, liquid, and due claim, issuance of stock warrants or warrants for business creator’s shares, contribution audits, merger audits, and transformation audits.
Due diligence
When an opportunity for external growth arises, we are able to conduct an acquisition audit of the target company, either as consultants or as statutory auditors, prior to your decision-making process.
Digitized services
We have an innovative, efficient, and collaborative accounting production tool, a true marketplace with an open API, which can be connected to most common applications used by entrepreneurs, including digital neo-banks, CRM tools, data analysis, electronic document management, and payroll software.
We can provide your accounting teams with our software to collaborate on your financial data in real-time. We can also fully handle the accounting process if certain structures do not have an accounting department.
Common questions about family offices
What is the role of a family office ?
The role of a family office is not to replace advisors such as chartered accountants, notaries, tax experts, etc. The family office is a private organization that ensures the overall coherence of decisions regarding the management of the assets and coordination among all advisors in order to preserve the family interests of wealthy individuals who have mandated or organized the family office.
What is the subsidiary health contribution ?
Individuals with significant property income without any professional income may be subject to the subsidiary health contribution (CSM). The base of the CSM consists of property income, investment income, capital gains, non-professional industrial and commercial profits, when they exceed 25% of the PASS (annual social security ceiling) and professional income is less than 20% of the PASS. Capital and property income are taken into account up to a limit of 8 PASS. The determined base is then subject to a 50% deduction of the PASS of the reference year.
A professional income of at least 20% of the PASS is sufficient to avoid the CSM.
What are the main securities or subscription rights used in fundraising ?
- BSA : share subscription warrants entitle the holder to subscribe for shares at a predetermined or determinable price. The beneficiary buys this right and has the choice to exercise it, thus subscribing to the shares, or not to exercise it.
- BSA ratchet: (Ratchet Warrants) this consists of issuing warrants to investors, allowing them to subscribe to an indeterminate number of shares at nominal value, which will be based on the valuation chosen for the next round (Full ratchet) or on the average valuation of the initial round and the subsequent round (Average ratchet). Ratchet warrants enable investors to readjust their holdings in the event of a subsequent valuation of the company that is lower than the one used at the time of their entry into capital.
- (BSA Air): BSA-AIR : Quick Investment Agreement Warrants (Warrants with Quick Investment Agreement) are warrants accompanied by a quick investment agreement that allows early-stage startups to raise funds quickly by deferring the determination of the company’s valuation to the occurrence of a subsequent event (such as a new financing round or a liquidity event).
- (BSPCE): Company Creator Stock Warrants are particularly suitable for startups due to specific conditions provided for in Article 163 bis G of the tax code that surround their allocation. These warrants are granted free of charge by the issuing company to all employees or certain employees, giving them the right to subscribe to shares at a predetermined price.
- Preferred Shares: These are capital securities with specific rights of any nature compared to ordinary shares, as defined in the in the Articles of Association (priority dividend, increased voting rights, right to a seat on the Board, etc.).
What services does our firm offer to family offices?
Whether we act as chartered accountants or statutory auditors for managed holdings, our expertise is based not only on our technical skills, but also on the values of family business, generational transmission and confidentiality.
Our accounting services cover both the accounting of entrusted companies and your personal wealth and tax situation, thanks to an extensive range of services that even includes the preparation of pay slips for your household employees.
As statutory auditors, we are committed to maintaining a constructive and flexible approach, supported by the trust built with your teams. We provide recommendations for the review of internal procedures and for the economic, tax and social analysis of your holdings, ensuring that our intervention brings added value beyond the certification of accounts.
