High-Net-Worth Archive
Beating the Odds
As advisors to wealthy families, we have a responsibility to help clients plan for the future and prepare for unpredictable events. The start of a new...
SEC Rules on the Family Office
Family offices must now square the corners of their ownership and investment process with a new regulation. The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer...
Asset Protection: Then and Now
The field of asset protection is often stigmatized. The phrase may inspire thoughts of deadbeats, scam artists, and tax evaders.1 However, the concept...
The Elephant in the Room
Family Office Exchange (FOX) has long maintained that an informed and educated client is a better client. This is especially true when it comes to wealth...
Breaking the Silence
Many wealth management professionals spend a large portion of their time and energy designing elegant, tax-efficient estate plans for their clients. This...
Warding Off Analysis Paralysis
Successful family business succession planning requires estate planners to simultaneously navigate the difficult waters of overcoming family dynamics...
The Great Cash Giveback
Corporations around the world responded aggressively to the global recession and financial crisis, clamping down on spending and hoarding massive piles of cash....
Taking a Little Off The Table
An astonishing 93 percent of family business owners depend on the family business as their primary source of income, according to the 2007 Laird Norton...
Is Blood Thicker Than Water?
Family businesses are different from other businesses. Besides unique estate tax, succession and governance issues, family businesses must also deal effectively...
New Uses for an Old Tool Private Operating Foundations
If I had to name one difference between private foundations (PFs) in the 20th and 21st centuries, I would use one word: In both centuries, plenty of PFs...
A Symbiotic Relationship
Much of the wealth being transferred in the United States today is in the form of highly appreciated illiquid assets: family businesses, closely held...
Making a Federal Case?
On Oct. 26, 2009, Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Douglas Shulman, speaking at the annual meeting of the American Institute of Certified Public...
Collaboration From the Family Office Perspective
For those of us in the business of providing client services, success is heavily dependent on our ability to offer the most comprehensive, cutting-edge...
Succession Planning
Leo Tolstoy begins Anna Karenina with the line: Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Much the same can be said...
Business Sales and Legacy Decisions
Selling a family business is typically complicated and fraught with emotional issues for the owner. The owner is selling his means of livelihood, and...
Despite Some Bumps, Firms Have Survived and Even Prospered
PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (PWC) has released its second global family business survey in November 2010, Kin in the Game, available online at www.pwc.com....
The Disappearing Billions
Jan. 1, 2010 marked a day that most trusts-and-estates practitioners never thought they would see and one they had repeatedly told their clients would...
Strength in the Face of Adversity
Rumors of the demise of the small family office have been greatly exaggerated. Although many wealthy families have changed the way their offices operate,...
McKinsey Report Identifies Five Attributes for Success
Family businesses are the backbone of the American economy. In fact, 90 percent of the approximately 15 million businesses in the United States are considered...
A Question of Value
The current economic climate and the financial upheaval of the last two years have many wealth owners taking a step back and re-evaluating the processes...
Financial Reform Knocks on The Family Office Door
On July 21, 2010, many single family offices watched President Obama sign into law the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (the...
Reputation Management in the Internet Age
Ripped from the headlines: CEO Faces $7 Million Judgment After Son's Driving Conviction in The Financial News Daily; Businesswoman Fires Nanny, Gets Slapped...
New IRS Holistic Audit Program
The federal government recently has enacted several laws increasing the reporting obligations of both U.S. resident and non-resident taxpayers and imposing...
Revising the Conversation About Risk and Risk Taking
The recent market crisis destroyed capital, challenged bedrock tenets of economics and revealed significant limitations in standard investment management...
Private Bank Presentations
I don't have to tell you private bankers how tough it is out there. You already know that your clients don't trust you, your organizations are in even...
Is It Time To Close The Family Office?
There are an estimated 3,000 single-family offices (SFOs) based in the United States1 and, according to a recent survey by the Wheaton, Ill.-based association...
Family Office Technology
Even in the past few years, there's been a quantum leap in the ability of modern technology tools designed to improve work group efforts and data management...
Michael Crichton's Posthumous Child
Michael Crichton left behind the makings of another kind of movie when he died on Nov. 4, 2008 at age 66...
What Clients Want To Talk About Now
You'd think that with interest rates at historic lows, assets highly undervalued and the prospect of a permanent estate tax, we estate planners would be deep in tax-planning sessions with clients...
They Want To Sell Their Company Now?
Your client spent a lifetime building his company and, now that he's ready to sell, the United States is in the middle of the worst recession in decades....
Shake Up!
The economic crisis is hitting the family offices of America's wealthy. Expect closings of both single family offices (SFOs) and multi-family offices...
Family Preservation, A Philosophy
Since 1993, I have been running, like Forrest Gump, down every road I could find to try to discover an antidote to the tragedy inherent in the American...
Junior Boards
When a group of Smith family members1 meets twice a year as a board to discuss investments and grantees for their family foundation, much of the procedure...
Wither the Family Office?
The family office market has become crowded and muddled. Once the domain of easily understood private offices, each dedicated to the needs of a single,...
Seeking Control
Financial families, defined as owners who manage their wealth as business, focused their attention in 2006 on enhancing their wealth strategies and strengthening...
HOW THE RICH GIVE
A new study on high-net-worth philanthropy shows that the rich are different. David T. Leibell and Daniel L. Daniels, partners of Cummings & Lockwood,...
The Sentimental Auction
From the grandfather clock that stood sentinel in the front hall of the family home to the worn-out tennis racquet Dad always used when letting his kids...
Funding the Ventures Of Family and Friends
Private equity is a hot investment these days. And while you may be referring your ultra-high-net-worth clients to established private equity firms, don't...
Registering with the SEC
Many family offices are paying close attention to the Securities and Exchange Commission's efforts to register and regulate hedge fund advisors. That's...
The Importance Of Being Benchmarked
Benchmarking has long been standard operating practice in the manufacturing industry. In the last 20 years, it's gotten more attention in the service...
VIP Healthcare
At 9:00 p.m. on the evening of July 4, Jim Ruddy received an emergency phone call from a Nevada hospital room. Ruddy, president of the private family...
Auction This
Recently, a wealthy art collector died, leaving a $20 million estate of paintings, drawings, sculptures and other pieces. The works belonged to a foundation...
TELL CLIENTS: START TALKING
Advisors take note: Baby Boomers and their parents need to do some serious talking. According to a new study, Americans in their 70s are more at ease...
SFO to MFO Conversions
Many wealthy families are tempted to convert their single-family offices (SFOs) into a multi-family office (MFOs). The hope is that sharing their office...
Eyes Wide Open
While modern corporations practice the art of risk management, this is not common among family enterprises, not even the most sophisticated. While wealth...
Appreciating Corporate Trustees
I have not always been an advocate of corporate trustees. Quite the contrary. I used to give a standard speech when my clients were wondering whom to...
Tech-savvy Family Offices
Management's highest priority is profitability1 and profits depend mostly on pricing2, according to two recent studies of the multi-family office industry....
Portraits of Rich Kids
In the 1880s, early in John Singer Sargent's career, he confronted a dilemma when painting children's portraits for wealthy English patrons. The artist,...
