Global Asset Structuring

We advise clients on establishing and developing structures that support their investment objectives, provide for multiple family members and facilitate the smooth transfer of wealth and control across generations.

Our advice includes the design, implementation and ongoing management of trust structures, corporate structures, and foundations globally. Our clients are individuals, high-net-worth families, family offices, corporate trustees and family businesses.

We are experienced in coordinating advice from multiple jurisdictions and work closely with international advisers to ensure the tax positions of the families and businesses across jurisdictions is managed effectively. 

Our work includes:

• the design, implementation, and ongoing development of global asset structures;
• structuring for asset protection, succession planning, and governance;
• coordination of multi-jurisdictional advice and implementation; and
• long-term support for internationally mobile individuals and families in ensuring that the family structures are sufficiently flexible to adapt to the changing position of family members.

Work highlights include advising:

• the trustee of a significant family trust and the family office established within the structure on a broad range of activities relating to the ongoing management of the structure. This includes involvement of the next generation, who have connections to multiple jurisdictions, different business interests, and financial requirements to balance short-term and longer-term requirements;
• a longstanding client, their family office (both in the US and the UK) and the trustees of numerous trust structures established for the benefit of their family that include a major operating business as well as diversified investment assets in relation to a major reorganisation of the operating business. This involves drawing on expertise from our Corporate and M&A and Tax teams to design and implement the reorganisation and coordinating legal tax advice across multiple jurisdictions to devise a holding structure for the business;
• the incoming trustees of a non-UK resident trust in highly complex circumstances and rectifying issues with the trust under its previous administration, including coordinating legal advice in multiple jurisdictions on the validity of the trust. This also involves taking steps to put the administration of the trust on a firmer footing and implementing new arrangements for the holding of assets including complex investments such as crypto-assets;
• a leading US technology investor and entrepreneur on their complex US/UK asset structures in relation to a return to the UK, with a particular focus on the UK tax treatment of their interests in a US-based venture capital business. This involved coordinating advice from legal and accounting experts in the US and the UK;
• the founders and key executives of a global private capital manager on their wealth structuring and estate planning, including their wills, trusts and succession arrangements, as well as coordinating their personal overseas legal and tax advice; and
• the founders of a multi-billion dollar tech company and their family office on the UK aspects of their global estate planning and on asset holding structures, including a possible move of multiple principals to the UK.