Planning ahead is the most important thing you can do to protect yourself and your family. Besides protecting your home from a possible burglary, it is important to think about your personal security. This article offers 28 tips for preventing a break-in and another 13 for keeping family members safe.
Every family has stories of success and failure, hardships and recovery, lessons learned and long forgotten, and it is these stories that enable members of the family to gain a sense of the family's uniqueness, connect with the source of the family's financial wealth, and deal with losses and transitions. The author suggests three ways to begin pre...
In the wake of SEC regulation, the best course of action for every family with a family office is to identify promptly the most desirable options for bringing their family into compliance by March 30, 2012 and, at the same time, helping it to turn arid compliance dollars into an optimal structure for achieving its long-term value.
The new regulatory requirements stemming from the passage of Dodd-Frank will certainly be a costly addition to the reporting framework of the alternative investment industry. However, this new era of heightened regulatory and compliance procedures also brings the potential benefits of financial stability and investor protection.
This guide covers wealth management and tax planning strategies to consider before year-end and into 2012. Topics include tax management, wealth transfer planning, education funding, philanthropy, retirement, liabilities management, insurance, business owner issues, tax implications of health care reform, and building a strategic plan.
Power failures, IT system crashes, supply chain problems or a flu epidemic can cripple a family office as completely as a natural disaster or terrorist attack. Developing and implementing a business continuity plan can help bolster a family business's defenses against such risks and serve as a first line of defense against losses.
The SEC and Cayman Islands Monetary Authority are establishing mechanisms for ongoing consultation, cooperation, and exchange of information related to the oversight of regulated entities that operate across national borders. Each agency intends to provide the other with assistance obtaining information that is needed to ensure compliance within th...
Continuity planning requires a comprehensive and thoughtful process that should be utilized and extended beyond the family to a broader group of enterprises that will potentially impact the family for generations to come, including the family office, family business, and family foundation.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission finalized several amendments to the registration and compliance requirements applicable to certain investment companies, including family offices. Family offices that trade futures contracts or even hire managers that include futures contracts in their portfolios would have to register under the Investment C...
“I’m not the only rich kid worried about the voodoo of inherited wealth.” With these words, 21-year-old Jamie Johnson, heir to the Johnson & Johnson fortune, set out to record his peers’ angst over coming into vast inheritances.
Educating the children of wealthy families can be an extremely difficult challenge. Today, more and more family offices are recognizing the compelling need to assist in the effort to educate heirs.
Financial families who have accumulated great wealth face unique challenges associated with passing that wealth productively to future generations, and/or philanthropic recipients. Being invested together in multiple financial and business opportunities requires a sophisticated structure for managing the family’s financial enterprise.
With the world changing so quickly, the role of the family as a bulwark of stability and support becomes increasingly important. In response to this growing educational need, Family Office Exchange in 1998 formed the FOX Foundation. Operating as the Family Learning Center, the Foundation will serve as a resource to facilitate all aspects of "famil...
The death of a matriarch. The sale of a family business. Big events can throw a financial family into flux. Tough transitions can be managed smoothly, however. Three industry experts gave practical advice on transitions to an audience of about 300 family members and office executives at the FOX Fall Forum, held in October at the Four Seasons Hotel ...
The transition of family leadership from one generation to the next is never a smooth road. Family members are often confused about their roles and apprehensive about where a new leader might take them. It's no surprise then that many families avoid facing the challenge of transition until it is inevitable.