While I was working as a consultant for FOX, the topic of leadership succession was often on my mind—particularly whenever I was working with a multi-generational family to facilitate the process for the family’s leadership transition.So for those of you thinking about leadership succession, here ar...

There are few speakers more compelling than Mellody Hobson.Hobson (president of Ariel Investments, chairman of the board for DreamWorks Animation SKG, Inc., director of The Estée Lauder Companies Inc. and Starbucks Corporation) is one of the most innovative thinkers and prominent leaders in th...

In my previous blog post, “Is the Multi-Family Office Pricing Model Broken?”, I noted that there has been a 15% drop in the pricing of wealth management-related services for ultra-high net worth client prospects since 2012. Since then, I heard back from several of you asking about how advisors plan ...

When considering an allocation to emerging markets, investors are almost universally seeking growth.Emerging economies have, indeed, significantly outperformed developed economies, with a GDP growth differential of over 4% per year during the decade from 2006 to 2015, based upon IMF data. For the pa...

At the inaugural FOX Global Owners Forum, I described the evolution that business-owning families experience—and the increased complexity they encounter—as they become family enterprises. Here is a short video that explains what I mean when I refer to Enterprise Families: [[{"fid":"21356","view...

I was recently chatting with longtime FOX member Richard Bakal about the upcoming FOX Family Enterprise Experience workshop. Over the course of our conversation, it became clear that Richard had a very clear grasp and understanding of the Family Enterprise concept, and so I asked him if he would wri...

Pricing at multi-family office firms is under pressure.That is one of the key findings in the 2016 FOX Wealth Advisor Benchmarking Study. Advisors are losing pricing power with their family client prospects, and have been for several years—there has been a 15% drop in the pricing of wealth managemen...

When I was heading up consulting for FOX, I had the pleasure of spending a morning with the staff of a large family office at their three-day retreat in the wilderness of northern Wisconsin. I was there to share some FOX wisdom and best practices, and found it invigorating to be with a group of enga...

On May 18, 2016, the Department of Labor (DOL) updated the Fair Labor Standards Act and expanded overtime eligibility for millions of American workers by increasing the minimum salary employers must pay workers to maintain their exempt status. The new minimum salary level outlined in the DOL's Final...

Family businesses in America generate 50% of the jobs, 64% of GDP and account for 61% of all privately owned businesses. While family businesses are very important to the economic growth of our country, they are not given proper consideration when new laws, regulations and restrictions are imposed b...