Search Results

In addition to guiding the family office, helping owners to think about issues that impact their family's goals is an important part of the family office CEO's role. While important to all financial families, these principles and practices become more critical as families grow in size and complexity and should be revisited regularly.

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.

“Mentoring is more than just a relationship between two individuals,” said James Ruddy, who launched a discussion on the topic at an enlightening and laughter-punctuated session at the 2005 Family Office Exchange CEO Forum. An attentive audience heard four diverse perspectives on the role of mentoring as a means to educate and groom successive gene...

The key to overcoming the paradoxes is looking at a family not as the sum of its wealth, but as a collection of living, breathing individuals drawn together through their affinity for the family. It requires a willingness to fight the natural impulses that lead other families to return to their shirtsleeves.

Family meetings can serve to update and educate family members on business and investment issues, reinforce family ties, and resolve conflicts. They can also be a lot of fun. But figuring out how to get the family members to the event, how to keep their attention once they've arrived, and how to make it fun in the process is no easy feat.

Family transitions are not only difficult, but potentially explosive. Younger family members often have a high sense of anxiety because they don't know what will happen next. At the same time, those in control may be unaware that others aren't happy. Mounting tensions can cause families to delay change as long as possible, often compounding the pro...

Selling the family-owned business is one of the most important financial decisions and transactions that any family will face. Business owners, their children and grandchildren will live with the results for a long time to come. Getting it right is important to maximize family wealth, and some basic advance planning — even several years in advance ...

Leadership succession and governance are important issues for every financial family. However, these issues are especially complex for business-owning families. To explore succession from an expert perspective, FOX spoke with Kelin Gersick, co-founder and senior partner of Lansberg, Gersick & Associates, a consulting and research firm specializing ...

Family Office Exchange LLC is often asked about resources that are available to teach basic concepts in money and finance. In response, we've researched some of the best Internet resources available.

It is now becoming more common for families to focus their overall estate planning strategy on communicating a family vision expressing the philosophical and moral imperatives of the wealth creators, rather than merely on minimizing taxes. The common structure for providing incentives to encourage or alter behavior is the trust.

The senior generation of a financial family usually has some notion of when and what to tell the next generation about the family finances. This is typically based on the family goals and family philosophy on how to reach those goals. For example, if parents are concerned that their offspring will fail to become productive members of society if all...

Timing isn’t everything in year-end charitable giving — it’s the only thing. When considering year-end charitable gifts, donors should keep these simple steps in mind.

The family office is often called upon to organize and staff family charitable endeavors. Community foundations can be a resource for the family office by providing information, insight, technical know-how, and alternate means of funding and conducting a family's charitable activities.

Family giving can be wonderfully gratifying as well as a bit messy. That goes double when several generations with different agendas run the family foundation. At the FOX Fall Forum, family members and foundation executives engaged in a lively discussion on how to effectively address questions related to family philanthropy.