Passing On A Partnership

Five guys named Vellano in the sewer business had good reason to break out the champagne at the start of 1992. Early in January their fathers signed a buyout agreement under which the five cousins — Jim Vellano and his brother, John, and Joe Vellano and his brothers Tony and Paul — became full owners of Vellano Bros., a $30 million water-pipe construction and distribution company with seven supply centers across New York State.

The two sets of cousins endured almost 12 years of stop-start negotiations and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal, accounting, insurance, and appraisal fees before buying out their fathers. The signing itself was almost anticlimactic since the younger crowd had been virtually running the company for a decade. Their fathers retired in 1987 and are now living in Florida.

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