Succession Planning

Succession raises some of the most important – and personal – questions our clients face. Who is part of my family? What holds my family together? Who do I trust to protect my family’s interests after I die? We help individuals, families and their advisers and businesses navigate this process with clarity and sensitivity.

Our teams advise on the creation of multi-generational structures. This includes the ongoing governance of those structures to manage and benefit multiple stakeholders for the long-term, careful consideration of family dynamics across generations and stress-testing structures to minimise the possibility of future disputes. We take the time to understand our clients’ values and priorities, and to design and implement solutions that are realistic, flexible and aligned with their wishes.

The majority of our clients have cross-border assets and connections to multiple jurisdictions. Our teams have considerable experience of developing and managing international structures and working with advisers in the relevant jurisdictions to ensure planning takes account of different regimes and nuances.

Whether we are updating a will, establishing a family constitution, or planning for the transfer of operating businesses or investment structures, our goal is the same: to create structure and continuity to achieve the aims of our clients and reduce the risk of disputes.

Work highlights include 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;
• 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;
• the CEO of a private equity fund on tax and estate planning including the establishment of suitable asset-holding structures to hold wealth for the next generation in a manner which retains a suitable degree of control while passing on wealth;
• a billionaire entrepreneur and their trustees on a broad range of issues relating to a structure of multiple trusts that hold a variety of international assets and investments, including working with lawyers in multiple jurisdictions on estate and succession planning arrangements and local law tax implications of a new trust, tax, trust and structuring considerations regarding the sale of an interest in a UK company within one of the trust structures and transparency and disclosure obligations for the trust structures in light of regime changes;
• an international business-owning family on the creation of a 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; and
• the family of an entrepreneur on the implementation of a global succession plan following his death, including international probate processes, transfer of assets and post-death tax and estate planning.