David Werdiger

David Werdiger has a rare mix of skills and experience.

David is second generation of a Jewish immigrant family that successfully built a large textile manufacturing business, and then moved into commercial real estate. David took his own path initially as a software developer and quant analyst, then as a technology entrepreneur, starting several businesses and joining several non-profit boards.

Over the past ten years, he has shaped his third career as an advisor, providing practical and appropriate solutions specifically for high-net-worth families. As a published best-selling author of Transition he has assisted many HNW families to navigate the complexities of succession planning, intergenerational wealth transition, and family governance.

David’s extensive commercial experience together with a confidential and empathetic relational approach to the challenges of family-related business issues, has allowed him to facilitate unique solutions for clients by tapping into his personal knowledge and highly resourceful professional and specialist advisor network.

Carefully packaged and staged projects provide clients with a reassuring consultative process that has successfully helped business owners establish a better work/life balance, retire, sell, hand over to the next generation or overcome family conflict.

A sampling of typical projects include:

• Assisting owner/founder to systematize and grow his business, unlocking its value by making it less reliant on him.
• Preparing family business owner – emotionally & financially – for the process of selling the family business and establishing a family office
• Helping a business reduce conflict between family members, align personal and business vision, and establish better communication and good governance as a foundation for the next stage of business growth
• Working with a family on policies to help foster entrepreneurship in the rising generation and prepare them to be effective custodians of the family assets
• Succession planning – preparing both the incumbent and rising generation for a handover of operational control and appropriate governance of the family business to make the business sustainable and keep the family peace

David is a regular speaker at HNW conferences and events around the world and is able to distill complex issues and present them simply and succinctly. David is a member of the UHNW Institute – a global think tank of practitioners servicing ultra-high-net-worth families – where he is on the faculty for the family dynamics domain. He is an accredited advisor at the Family Business Association, on the expert panel at &Simple, a Partner Member at Respada, a guest lecturer at Harvard Business School on families in business, and at Swinburne University sits on the entrepreneurship course advisory committee and is an adjunct industry fellow.

David is married with five children and deeply engaged with his local community through a number of non-profits. He’s writing his second book – about the challenges of the modern always-connected digital world. In between all that, he is passionate about sport – particularly AFL, cricket and NFL.