Family Offices

What is a family office? For some families it is a small team advising on logistics and administrative arrangements. For others it is a significant business in its own right, managing international assets and investments, as well as joint ventures with third parties. 

We advise family offices at every stage of their development and across all areas of operation, from succession planning and governance, to investment activities and remuneration arrangements. Our clients range from families who are just beginning to think about setting up a formal office structure to longstanding multi-generational and multi-jurisdictional operations. We regularly work with private capital principals who are looking to diversify their exposure and those whose investment platforms have evolved into family offices.

As family offices have become significant participants in the private capital market, our combination of leading Private Capital and Private Client teams means we are ideally placed to advise on their strategy, investments and operations. We draw on firmwide expertise to support with:

• establishing a family office, including structuring, governance requirements, and day-to-day operations;
• implementation and ongoing operation of investment functions;
• interacting with existing trading businesses including ensuring appropriate controls for family members and robust governance arrangements between the business, family office and family;
• succession planning to ensure smooth transition to the next generation of family members and advisers over the long-term;
• ensuring remuneration arrangements are created to attract and retain key personnel;
• developing frameworks for involving family members in the family office structure; and
• updating the family office structures to suit evolving family, family office and business needs.

Because there is no single model for a family office, our approach is tailored to the needs of each client. We understand the varied priorities that shape these decisions, and the family dynamics that can influence them.

With our experience of dealing with cross-border issues, we routinely assist family offices with expanding their operations internationally, navigating the challenges of a globalised world and operating across jurisdictions. 

Work highlights include:

• Advising the UK and US family office of an international entrepreneur on all aspects of the family’s structuring and estate planning, including the design and implementation of sophisticated asset-holding structures and family governance structures for the client to achieve their succession planning and asset protection objectives. We act as lead counsel, coordinating international tax and estate planning advice across a wide range of jurisdictions in the US, Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Australasia.
• Advising Luxembourg-based family office, Sadel Group, on a £500m facility to refinance its cold storage business Magnavale.
• Acting as worldwide lead counsel to a Middle Eastern family office to professionalise their arrangements and develop a unified approach to estate planning and asset structuring, including drafting bespoke trusts with Shari’a succession principles, establishing a collective investment structure to promote family collaboration. This also involved coordinating international counsel on a multi-jurisdictional restructuring of asset holding structures.
• Advising a billionaire entrepreneur and their family office as primary legal counsel on a broad range of issues including UK tax regime changes, structuring options for transferring assets to the next generation, operational advice on development of the UK family office and the impact of global sanctions on the client’s business.
• Acting as principal legal advisers to a family office and holding structure which includes a global operating business. We initially advised on the creation of the family office and over more than a decade our wide-ranging advice has supported the further professionalisation of the family office. This has included reviewing the governance of the group from a tax and succession perspective, ensuring that the group operates for the long-term with a view to managing generational change.
• Advising a family office on UK tax issues relating to a number of underlying trusts established by members of the family, including advising on the application of the UK’s so-called “motive defences”. This work also involved working closely with US counsel to advise on the interaction of US and UK tax with respect to specific investments and investment structures, taking account of uncertainty in arrears such as the treatment of LLC’s in the UK.