Private Client

We draw on decades of experience to advise our clients on how to manage their affairs in a complex and ever-changing world. Our clients include international entrepreneurs and their families, family offices, trustees, private banks and charities. 

We cover all aspects of private client advice, from tax, trust and succession planning to charity and philanthropy and private client disputes.

What sets us apart is our ability to apply this expertise to situations for high-net-worth clients with complex assets, business interests and families often across multiple jurisdictions. We bring together private client, corporate, funds and tax experience to deliver coordinated advice and strategy.

We excel in managing cross-disciplinary and multi-jurisdictional matters that require us to coordinate a team of advisers both within our firm and internationally.

Our advice and support for clients includes:

• multi-generational planning and structuring for international business-owning families;
• the creation of, and ongoing advice to, family offices;
• designing new trusts and restructuring existing trusts to reflect the needs of settlors and beneficiaries;
• advising fund management executives on the structuring of their remuneration and interests in management structures;
• managing complex and sensitive tax enquiries and disputes;
• administration of UK and international estates and probate;
• advising on the consequences of individuals moving between jurisdictions including pre-arrival planning for individuals moving to the UK; and
• structuring and implementing philanthropic and charitable objectives.

Work highlights include:

• Ongoing operation of global asset structures: acting as primary legal counsel to a US-based billionaire, their family office and trustees in relation to the ongoing operation of global trust and asset structures, which includes a major trading business. Recent advice included a major reorganisation of the operating business, succession planning and establishing trusts for wider family members.
• Family office succession planning and family governance: advising a high-profile entrepreneurial family and their family office on their succession planning and family governance arrangements for the family holding structure which includes a global technology business, including the creation of a family council to provide a forum for the first generation to share control of the business.
• International estate planning: acting as the principal lawyers to a high-profile billionaire and as the architects of their global estate planning arrangements which span over ten jurisdictions, covering personally held assets and assets held in structures, coordinating counsel across all jurisdictions to build a cohesive global succession plan.
• Tax residence dispute: advising a prominent member of a global family on a successful high-profile tax residence dispute which related to the application of a double tax treaty and the client’s “centre of vital interests”.
• Family trust dispute: providing longstanding advice to an ultra-high-net-worth UK individual who is the main beneficiary of a series of trusts that hold the major stake in a multi-billion dollar business. Advice relates to issues of corporate, trust and family governance as well as the resolution of a long-standing family dispute.  
• Family constitution and governance: advising an international business-owning family on the creation of a “living” family constitution in the form of a foundation which plays a role in the family’s dynastic trusts. The foundation helps balance family involvement against long-term professional governance.
• Creation of family office and wealth structures: advising an international couple based in the UK with significant investments in multiple asset classes and sectors, ranging from extensive private shareholdings and cryptoassets, on the creation of long-term family wealth holding structures while balancing tax considerations in multiple jurisdictions and planning for potential changes of residence.
• Pre- and post-death estate and succession planning: advising the founder of a European asset management group on the creation of a family office investment structure following a significant liquidity event, and following the client’s death, coordinating the implementation of the global succession plan for the client’s family including international probate processes, transfer of assets and post-death tax and estate planning.
• Multi-jurisdictional estate and succession planning: advising on complex US/UK estate and succession planning for an international family with trading businesses and a significant art collection, including material French and Channel Islands assets.