New family business consulting firm launches: Lineage Group
A trio of KPMG alumni – Dominic Pelligana, Michelle De Lucia and Andrew Muscara – have launched a new business consultancy. Melbourne-based Lineage Group focuses exclusively on clients in the family business sector.
Spearheaded by three-decade KPMG veteran Dominic Pelligana, Lineage Group offers a range of services, including strategic and financial planning, tax and compliance advice, next generation transition, family office support, and philanthropy and social impact.
“Contributing 70% of global gross economic output, family businesses are a brilliant business model, but greatly misunderstood and underserviced. After decades of advising business families at KPMG, and having grown up in our own family businesses, we fully understand what it’s like to operate in the unique landscape,” said Pelligana.
The two other partners of the new consulting firm, Michelle De Lucia and Andrew Muscara, both spent around seventeen years at KPMG, latterly serving as director and senior manager respectively.
According to Pelligana, the firm’s niche focus on family businesses provides the firm an edge in a market that is dominated by the larger accountancy-origin players such as KPMG and its main rivals. “We’ve got a real vision and strategy about how to best serve families. [The larger advisory firms] are focused on scale and internal efficiencies, but this type of client requires a higher proportion of partner time,” he said.
“Within a large firm, we saw how family businesses can be treated like a transaction, with little investment in a relationship. The very thing that families thrive on. And so do we,” said De Lucia. “Our successful track record of delivering for families comes from taking the time to truly understand them, inside and out.”
“We use our deep insights and connections to help families achieve what they want personally and commercially,” added Muscara.
On top of nurturing close relationships, “this market segment demands clear and unambiguous advice, which could cause commercial conflicts within a large firm,” Pelligana remarked, pointing to the traditional advisory versus audit conflicts which may arise with groups that offers both services.
Lineage Group focuses on mid- to large-sized family business and high-net-worth families, with “a dozen foundation clients” among the launching customer portfolio. “This powerfully connected network allows us and our clients to benefit from collective knowledge. We have the ability to connect family leaders to opportunities and networks they couldn’t achieve on their own,” explained Muscara.
Lineage Group opened for business at the start of this month. The firm aims to grow to a team of around 40 consultants and staff by the end of the summer.
