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Teaching children about personal finance, owning foreign assets, assessing the impact of tax extenders, and staying current on the Net Investment Income Tax are topics that many high net worth individuals must address in an on-going basis. Understanding the often highly complex issues and ever changing rules are challenging for even the most diligent individual.

In previous studies we've talked about the critical success factors for family businesses: the 3 'S's: skills, scale and succession. These are as relevant for the next gen to be successful as they are for the current gen. And now, we think there is a fourth to add that will be critical for the next gen as they adapt to today's business environment—stakeholders. Across all businesses, stakeholders are becoming increasingly important in determining business success.

It’s tempting to imagine the computer systems as airtight vaults, impenetrable and immune to cyberattacks. But this would be a risky move. In reality, IT infrastructure is more like a porous sponge with gaping holes where data can leak when things don’t go according to plan: a staff member might lose a laptop, a system might experience a configuration error, or sensitive information might accidentally be published online.

In today’s world of big data, an information breach can put sensitive financial data in the hands of people who would use it for fraudulent purposes. One of the most troublesome uses for stolen information is the filing of fraudulent tax returns. In 2015 alone, an IRS hack left the data of more than 700,000 taxpayers compromised. Tax return identity theft presents a harder problem to solve than fraudulent credit card use, because a taxpayer’s social security account is much harder to change.

All companies hit bumps along the road to growth, bumps that usually have less to do with external factors like the industry and marketplace and much more to do with the natural way organizations evolve. The most successful organizations and enterprises plan ahead. They have the foresight, and they proactively make the proper organizational changes to accelerate them through the four phases of the business life cycle: startup, growth, maturity, and decline. There are seven critical factors to help navigate the transition and reignite growth.

Talking about wealth is every bit as important as creating a technical wealth plan—if not more so. Preparing a wealth transfer plan for your assets “on paper,” but failing to help your loved ones understand how to manage those assets in their lives, leaves the true process of sharing wealth incomplete and subject to real, but avoidable, risks. When it comes to family money and wealth, it is important to understand the variety of styles families may employ to encourage proactive, healthy, and informative family discussions.

Our January 2016 commentary suggested “…we are in a transition period between central bank-induced liquidity and eventual normalization of markets. This transition period has been and will continue to be a bit choppy…”

Brought on by concerns about the strength of the global economy and extreme investor pessimism, the volatile start to 2016 drove many equity markets near or into bear market territory. A subsequent rally began mid-February from severely oversold conditions as it became clear that the U.S. was not headed for a recession. As is common during volatile market environments, investors were quick to react to negative headlines, feeding the tendency to panic when things seem at their worst. In investing, however, it is important to avoid making emotional decisions.

The spillover of recent market volatility from China into the rest of the world reflects poor communication by Chinese authorities and a lack of transparency of their ultimate goals. The backdrop of global volatility is also reflective of rising fears of geopolitical risks, especially a Middle Eastern conflict. Economic growth indicators have also been somewhat soft. Despite the market fears and stock market circuit breaker, the global economy is likely to remain on stable footing and that the sharp drop in Chinese equities is due to localized structural, not global economic factors.

The wealthy are caught in the high-beam headlights of toxic rhetoric around equity, inequality, greed, power, excessive affluence, and influence of the wealthiest 1 percent. This has become a hot issue in the political environment, where both old media and new social media continue to add data that fuels the growing anger toward, and mistrust of, wealth. It raises the question of what are realistic responses for those with wealth, the families and individuals who are in the 1 percent, even if their wealth is nowhere on the scale of the very wealthiest.