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At some point, most families ask if they should have a family meeting, recognizing the importance of providing a forum for sharing news, concerns, opportunities, and challenges in an open and direct way. Family meetings are often seen as a great place to learn, whether the topic is investments, business, legal matters, or the family itself. Further...

Risk has many dimensions and individual investors tend to equate risk with loss of capital. That definition of risk may actually lead an investor astray and hinder his or her ability to meet long-term objectives. Rather than attempting to avoid risk, successful investors embrace and manage it. For private investors, one of the keys to success is se...

If you are wondering how it is possible that everyone in your family is offering an excuse for missing the family meeting date, then it is time for some new ideas or approaches to turn these meetings into events that no one wants to miss. How? By planning a purposeful family event that also happens to include the family meeting. In addition, it wil...

The 2018 U.S. Trust Insights on Wealth and Worth® study asked nearly one thousand high-net-worth individuals about their approach to building wealth and the extent to which they are using it to achieve their goals and support the causes they care about most. The study found that while wealth provides the freedom to do more, it also brings increased...

This handbook is designed to support families connected through wealth understand the importance and value of family meetings. It provides the concepts, tools, and resources with the intention of helping them optimize their family meetings and build towards a more cohesive, resilient, adaptive family.

Poorly structured family meetings that lack a clear purpose and agenda can do more harm than good. Failing to get buy-in from all family members can cause irreparable damage to relationships, despite the best of intentions. There are five key tips for holding a successful family meeting, which is an essential ingredient for managing wealth across g...

Families are often overwhelmed by the complexity and sense of burden that comes with managing all the component parts of wealth across generations. More concerning, though, is the lost opportunities and the loss of capital that results from not getting it right. But owning and managing significant wealth does not have to be difficult, and learning ...

As technological advances are disrupting and transforming companies in every sector, the traditional investing landscape is also being disrupted. Venture capital is at the core of the transformation and has become a critical component of a long-term investment strategy. With the potential for attractive returns and significant impact to society, ve...

In this exclusive chat with Mellody Hobson, the President and co-CEO of Ariel Investments, speaks candidly about the importance and value of diversity in finance—how being color brave can improve business and society at large. Mellody shares personal stories and lessons learned from her investment career, including the disconnect tha...

Portfolio management for families of significant wealth is distinctly different than those with traditional wealth management needs. For these families, wealth typically exists in a much more complex ecosystem—among real estate investments, operating companies, or multiple generations, by way of example. These factors and other considerations ...

Even if you are not yet ready to share the family's wealth numbers, communicating your intentions to the next generations promotes family harmony and is a best practice for successfully sustaining and transferring family wealth. It may also be time to schedule a family meeting for this purpose. There is no right way to conduct this meeting, bu...

Sustainability is increasingly material to investment return, and there are five prominent trends—including climate change and technological revolution—that are likely to have relevant implications for investment portfolios over the long term. Ultimately, investors that evolve more quickly to incorporate these risks and opportunities into...

Advisors and investors have long struggled with demonstrating the value of their advice recommendations. By putting a number on the value of their advice, financial advisors can surface the highest-value advice interventions and demonstrate their value to clients to retain and attract more business. The value of this personalized advice—which can s...

A well-defined governance system is what drives a strategy for portfolio investments—all the while increasing a family’s ability to formulate its goals and policies, make decisions, and perform an oversight function. This paper can help families in the development of their own decision-making framework and focuses on three core building blocks...

Many newly wealthy families can credit their expanded fortunes to a major liquidity event, most frequently the sale of a business. For many in this group, recently acquired wealth creates a host of new and, sometimes unexpected, challenges. While the challenges will vary from family to family, the members of this group share some common n...