Family Offices

With a view to safeguarding the achievement of many decades and building on that success, family businesses are increasingly turning to professional asset planning and administration via a family office. A family office takes care of asset allocation and management, thereby relieving the family-owned business or wealth owner of many routine tasks.

Every family office is unique

A successful family office reflects the structure and core values of the associated family-owned business, which means that every family office requires individually tailored advice. Our Private Clients experts respond to this need by basing their solutions on the specific requirements and objectives of the family office and the families involved. In many cases, we have been advising family offices for more than three generations.

Our services for family Offices

When providing family office advice to family-owned businesses, we start by exploring the risks and return expectations in the context of the underlying assets. This includes considering the philosophy of the family business and the personality of the owners.

We support the family office in relation to structuring family wealth, draft shareholder agreements and employment contracts for the family office, advise on corporate law and tax aspects of a wide range of investments (e.g. real estate, art, equity interests) and assist with arrangements for corporate succession.

The areas in which we advise family offices include:

• Advice on structuring family wealth
• Shareholder agreements and employment contracts, contract management
• Tax planning and optimisation in the context of a family office
• Asset structuring via trusts, (family) foundations or other independent asset vehicles
• Legal and tax advice for family offices when investing in real estate, art and equity interests
• Corporate succession and wealth succession/estate planning, inheritance support
• Preparing family constitutions and organising family meetings
• Legal structuring of bank accounts/asset management agreements
• Administration, documentation, reporting and monitoring