It is now accepted that that the family enterprise is a complex economic and emotional system in which the needs of the family and their enterprising activities have to be balanced. This fact makes it impractical to detach the interests and needs of a family from their enterprise and advise them completely separately.

 

Enterprising families do not consider their lives and relationships to be a series of technical problems to which there are proficient answers. Their reality involves making crucial decisions about the transfer of wealth, power, roles and titles whilst being fair, loving and considerate with the family and their legacy.

 

Through our experience and specialist knowledge of working with family enterprises, we are able to recommend innovative strategies for developing, managing and preserving the family enterprise. This will involve discussions on family governance, the 'vision'  and 'values' of the family enterprise, education and training of family members, philanthropy, the family constitution and succession planning. Our financial planning approach can then help you in planning for the changes that may occur over the next 10 to 20 years.

 

"The more you invest in a governance structure for your [family office] the more you communicate and interact with the family members and the more you invest in the education of the next generation, the better the performance will be. Moreover, we found these families to be happier than others as they were able to balance their personal wealth with entrepreneurial creativity, philanthropy and leadership in society, to serve as positive role models." *

 

*Benchmarking the Single Family Office: Identifying the Performance Drivers. Wharton Global Family Alliance at the University of Pennsylvania in partnership with IESE Business School in Barcelona. November 2009.