Three ways in, with the numbers on the page. The first one exists to tell you whether you need the other two.

About three hours of conversation, in person or online, at R3 500, and nothing to sign at the end of it. We go through the companies, the structures, the financial statements, the current corporate ownership, the estate planning position of each shareholder, and the risks that fall out of all four. You do not have to prepare anything or tidy the documents first. If they were in order you would probably not be reading this page.

At the end of it we say one of three things. There is work worth doing, and here is roughly what it is. There is work worth doing, but not this year. Or this is not our problem to solve, and here is who should be looking at it. The meeting itself carries no obligation to go further, and if you do go further the R3 500 comes off the governance check in full.

Because the time has to be respected on both sides. A booked session is three hours in the room and a block of preparation before it, and payment is what turns a provisional date into a real one. The full R3 500 on booking, with nothing to settle on the day.

Taking all of it at once is also simply cleaner than half now and half later. Nobody has to think about money in the room, there is no card machine at the end of a conversation about succession, and the session finishes on what was decided rather than on an invoice.

It also filters. Some enquiries were never going to become work, and a fee payable upfront finds that out early instead of three rescheduled meetings later, which is fairer to the people whose enquiries will become work. And because the whole R3 500 is credited against the governance check if you proceed, it costs you nothing to be serious. The fee is a filter, not a toll.

Complexity, and only complexity. R10 000 is the floor, and it buys the same method every time: the King V run through, the assessment of structures, shareholder positions and board positions, the fiduciary duty determination under the Companies Act 71 of 2008, two half day sessions and one full written report with the recommended structure ready to implement.

What moves it upward is the four things set out further up this page: how many entities are involved, how many people have to agree, whether something has to be unwound before anything new can be built, and whether you want advisory only or implementation too. You will be quoted on those before anything begins, not after.

From R10 000 per month on a retained seat, or from R18 000 per meeting on a four meeting year. Which of the two fits depends on how often you actually need the seat filled rather than on which number looks smaller.

The fee moves with complexity and with the level of assurance the engagement asks for, because a seat that carries a formal assurance role carries more preparation and more liability than one that does not. The range is set against the Non-Executive Directors' Fees Guide published by the Institute of Directors in Southern Africa, which benchmarks South African non-executive fees by company size. The guide is theirs, not ours, so you can check the number against the market rather than take it on trust.

What you are buying is advice on structures, on AI readiness and on value chain automation, brought to the board table by someone who has to sign off on the consequences. Not a name on a letterhead.

No, and it would be a poor idea if we tried. I have an accounting and tax background and I do not practise as an accountant or a tax practitioner. Your accountant holds the numbers and the tax position. Your attorney drafts and settles the instruments. A licensed financial services provider advises on and places the products. This practice designs the structure and the governance, and then works with all three to put it in place.

In practice we would rather bring your existing advisers into the work early than around it. A structure your accountant first sees when it is finished is a structure that will be argued with, and they will often be right.

Yes. Nothing shared in an enquiry, a first consultation or an engagement is disclosed outside that engagement without your permission. No client is named as a reference without written consent, which is also why this site carries no case studies and no client logos.

If you would prefer a signed confidentiality agreement before the first conversation rather than after it, ask and one will be in place before we speak. That is a normal request in this kind of work, not an awkward one.

The advice itself is a different matter, and it is not secret at all. Take everything said in that room to your attorney, your accountant or your auditor and ask them what they think of it. Please do. Advice that only holds up while nobody else is checking it was never worth paying for, and a structure your own professionals cannot follow is a structure that will quietly fail the moment you are not there to explain it.

Businesses under R20 million in turnover, in most cases. At that size a good accountant and a clear head usually beat a trust structure, and paying for governance you cannot yet use is money we will tell you to keep.

Businesses above R250 million. The large advisory firms are properly equipped, and properly priced, for work at that scale, and you will be better served there.

Businesses whose real problem is that nobody knows they exist, or whose website loses the enquiries they already earn. Those are a marketing problem and a web problem respectively, and restructuring will fix neither.

And anyone looking for a structure to put something out of reach of a creditor, a spouse or the revenue authority. Tax evasion is a criminal offence and we will not go near it. Nor will we build a structure whose dominant purpose is a tax benefit, which is exactly what the general anti avoidance rules in sections 80A to 80L of the Income Tax Act 58 of 1962 exist to unwind.

What we do is different, and the difference matters. We structure a business around how it actually operates, who actually owns it and how it is actually meant to pass to the next generation, and the tax treatment then follows that reality rather than dictating it. That is tax structuring, it is lawful, and it survives inspection.

And anyone whose structure needs to cross a border. Offshore holding companies, cross border groups and international tax regime arrangements are outside this practice, and we would rather tell you that on this page than three hours into a paid consultation. Local is lekker, and knowing one jurisdiction properly is worth more to you than knowing several approximately.

It has to survive inspection, because SARS will be running the same class of AI tooling we build for clients. A structure that only works while nobody is looking is a structure with a shelf life, and it is not the kind you want carrying a business meant to run for generations.