Wealth structuring
Our clients seek to manage their wealth not merely to grow it, but to preserve it for future generations.
We take a holistic approach to wealth structuring, working hard to identify legal solutions that work across different countries and asset classes, but which also feel right to each individual or family.
This might involve creating holding structures to include trusts, foundations, companies and partnerships, or making use of treaties to maximize investment potential. We also assist families consider their asset protection and long term family succession by creating the most suitable vehicles to provide maximum return and post-lifetime planning mechanisms through wills and other testamentary arrangements.
With 17 offices around the world, we’ve structured our teams to be able to give cohesive advice across jurisdictions. For example our London office has the largest team of US-qualified lawyers in the UK, making us the go-to law firm for American citizens living in the UK. And with leading lawyers in related fields including estate administration, elder law, international trusts, tax and philanthropy, we can offer a fully integrated service.
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Managing political risk
We are in uncertain political times. Whether economic, personal or otherwise, we can help individuals and businesses take practical steps to reduce their exposure.
How the team can help
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A wealthy European family
A European family asked us to create an overarching trust structure to hold their commercial interests in the UK, Greece, Cyprus, Singapore and elsewhere. Resident in Monaco and London, the family needed the structure to operate as an estate plan, enabling wealth to be passed between generations. This was all done in conjunction with a family constitution governing the management of their wealth.
European family with US connections
We advised our client, a non-domiciled UK resident and his family on a new structure that was required to be efficient from a US and UK perspective and with trusts designed to optimize tax efficiency for his children on the event of his death. Our family team also advised on a multi-jurisdictional post nuptial agreement.
Estate of a 32 generation family
We advised a family on the most appropriate structure to hold an estate that has been in the family for 32 generations. A complex matter, the family wanted the estate to be held by all of their children rather than one ‘heir’ but for the ‘rules’ of ownership and transfer to be clear and fair and ensure that the family asset is retained.
Protecting family wealth in a US-Canadian marriage
The child of a wealthy Canadian family moved to the United States and married. We advised the family on protecting their assets and created trust structures sufficiently flexible to grow with the child and the child's emergent new family needs, while avoiding inclusion in the child's US estate and minimizing a potential divorce settlement payout. This included optimizing various in-bound real estate investments as the family purchased, exchanged and extensively renovated properties.
An ultra high-net-worth Asian family
Our Singapore office helped a wealthy Asian family to design and implement a wealth-holding structure that would segregate assets of different classes. Our clients hoped to rationalise a disparate set of holding structures, protect their assets and implement some effective family governance, and we were able to meet all their objectives.
Managing wealth between generations
Assisted a UK based family whose business is in the second/third generation on creation of wealth planning structures, including family limited partnerships, primarily for the purposes of enabling the elder generation to pass on shares in the family business to the younger generation without passing on complete control of the business until such time as the younger generation had proved their credentials.
Brazilian family
Aided a Brazilian family with significant US commercial real estate holdings to restructure the ownership of this property to avoid US estate tax. Also devised arrangements for Brazilian residents to create legitimate structures that are protected from Brazilian taxation, permit efficient repatriation of capital to Brazil when needed and ensure optimal flexibility and family control to respond to changing needs and tax laws in the future.
Property on French Riviera
Prominent Russian Family
A wealthy Kazakh family
Representing Canadian entrepreneur
Our client is a prominent Canadian entrepreneur with US ties, who we have advised for over a decade. Amongst an array of legal services, this has included coordinating her worldwide succession planning structure and advising on postnuptial co-ordination for her second marriage to protect her substantial global business interests.
Chilean US family tax work
Working with a Chilean–US family, we helped to address compliance deficiencies in their family wealth succession planning structure. Small modifications to the structure substantially decreased US annual taxation and simplified reporting, addressing the US family members' income tax, FBAR and FATCA reporting issues. We also liaised with Chilean banks to quickly unfreeze needed accounts.
Chilean US immigration
Managing inherited Israeli funds
We helped a US based family with inherited Israeli funds understand and navigate the structure of their inheritance. The non-US trustee was losing significant money each year through the investment strategy, structural inefficiencies and tax inefficiencies, and the inheritance had dwindled without being tapped for use by the beneficiaries. We delicately negotiated with the trustee to stop the hemorrhaging of the assets while working with the IRS to obtain a full penalty waiver for the beneficiaries with respect to failing to report their inheritance to the IRS (initial projections showed potential penalties well in excess of the remaining inheritance).
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