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Family Office Wealth Management
Wealth management is becoming increasingly complex, and more and more ultra-wealthy families are turning to family offices to ensure that their wealth is protected, optimized, and passed down to future generations.
In this article, we will delve deeper into the world of family office wealth management, exploring what it is, how it works, and its benefits.
Key Takeaways
- Family offices serve ultra high net worth individuals and families and helps them preserve and successfully transfer their wealth
- Family offices are especially beneficial for their dedicated teams, cost effectiveness, and greater returns
- Popular family offices include Cascade Investments, Walton Enterprises and more
Disclaimer
The contents of this article are for educational purposes only. They are not intended to be a source of professional financial advice. You will find experts on financial planning and financial management here. More on disclaimers here.
Understanding a Family Office
A family office is a wealth management advisory firm that's private and serves ultra-high net worth families or an individual member of the family or several wealthy families that have chosen to combine their assets, with an aim of preserving family wealth.
The difference between a family office and a traditional wealth management company is that a family office offers tailored services and outsources solutions in order to help manage the financial assets of a family. Among the services offered by a family office include wealth transfer, tax services, budgeting, insurance, etc.
Benefits of a Family Office
Among the benefits associated with having a family office include:
1. Dedicated Team
One of the main advantages of having a family office is having a dedicated team that helps you manage and keep track of your investments. The team that you're engaging with needs to understand the family's risk tolerance, wants and needs, investment portfolio, etc. It is very important that there is also a high level of confidentiality and privacy between the family and the family office team.
2. Cost-effective
Having a family office manage your assets and investments is definitely more cost-effective than having a whole dedicated organization do it. Having an internal team combine resources helps to avoid duplicate efforts in a family office. Therefore, there is high efficiency at a reasonable cost.
3. Greater Financial Returns
With a family office, the clients are more likely to experience greater financial returns because, as the family office creates tailor-made financial solutions, they do choose the best kind of investments that suit the family's needs, wants, values and competencies. In addition, they also carry out better allocation of capital as the solutions provided are tailor-made and all operational and administrative efforts are centralized.
Family Office Wealth Management Firms
Cascade Investment
Cascade Investment Group Inc is a family office that was established in 1996 with a core focus on their client relationship. It is an American holding company that has its headquarters in Kirkland, Washington, United States. Cascade Investment has assets worth $70 billion.
Among the services offered by the company include wealth management, investment advice, financial planning, retirement planning, non-profit asset management, special-needs planning, insurance services, social security retirement planning and business retirement plans.
Walton Enterprises LLC
Walton Enterprises LLC is a family office that's based in Bentonville, AR, United States. It currently has assets worth $169 billion and it serves Sam and Helen Walton on a personal and business level.
The company helps all the family members in the Walton family reach their personal, business and philanthropic goals. Among the family office services that they provide include treasury, financial/accounting, tax, personal administrative services, investment, legal and risk management/insurance.
The company is very committed to promoting equity, and inclusion within the organization in order to create an environment where all people can thrive.
Bezos Expeditions
Bezos Expeditions is a family office that was founded in 2005 by Jeff Bezos. The family office is located in Mercer Island, WA United States, North America. The American investment firm was established with the aim of serving as a family office for Jeff Bezos in order to help him manage his personal investments. Bezos Expeditions currently has assets totaling to $107.8 billion.
The company also invests in early stage ventures, late stage ventures and seed stages of companies in many different sectors. In terms of investments, among the high profile ones that they've made include: Twitter, Airbnb, Uber, Stack Overflow, General Assembly, Workday and Business Insider.
In addition, the firm also supports funding philanthropic efforts. For example, the Innovation center at the Seattle Museum of History and Industry and the Bezos Center for Neural Circuit Dynamics at Princeton Neuroscience Institute.
Mousse Partners
Mousse Partners Ltd is one of the world’s largest and most discrete family offices. It has been run for more than two decades by Charles Heilbronn, half-brother of Alain and Gerard, who are credited with owning equal shares of the London-based luxury empire built on No. 5 perfume, the little black dress and the genius of designer Karl Lagerfeld.
Dubai Holding LLC
Dubai Holding LLC was established in 2004. It's a family office that's located in Dubai United Arab Emirates, Middle East. In total, the company has assets worth $35 billion. It currently operates in 13 countries under the leadership of Sheikh Ahmed Bin Saeed Al Maktoum as Chairman.
The company was established with the aim of creating an economy that's driven by innovation and knowledge in order to make Dubai the most productive city in the world.
MSD Capital
MSD Capital is a Family Office located in New York, NY United States, North America. The private investment firm was established in 1998 to exclusively manage the assets of Michael Dell and his family. The family office manages assets worth $31 billion. The company has offices located in New York, Santa Monica and West Palm Beach.
Bayshore Global Management
Bayshore Global Management LLC is a single-family office that's located in Palo Alto, CA United States, North America. The company was founded in 2006 and is the single-family office of Google co-founder Sergey Brin and his wife Anne Wojcicki.
The company has assets worth $30.1 billion and the family's assets are managed by the executive management team.
Emerson Collective
Emerson Collective LLC was founded in 2004 by Laurene Powell Jobs. The family office is located in Palo Alto, CA United States, North America. It serves as the personal single-family office of the Powell family. The organization also focuses on immigration reform, education, the environment, media, journalism, and health. In total, the company manages assets worth $26 billion.
Soros Family Office
Soros Family Office is a family office that's located in New York, United States. It was founded in 1997 by billionaire philanthropist George Soros. The company has assets totaling $25 billion. The foundation has additional offices in London, Johannesburg and Freetown.
Bay Street Capital Holdings
Bay Street Capital Holdings is an independent investment advisory, wealth management, and financial planning firm headquartered in Palo Alto, CA. They manage portfolios with the goal of maintaining and increasing total assets and income with a high priority on managing total risk and volatility. Although many advisors may focus on maximizing returns, they place a higher priority on managing total risk and volatility.
Our founder, William Huston founded Bay Street after 13 years of supporting the United States' largest retirement plan ($650B) Thrift Savings Plan. He is recognized as Investopedia’s Top 100 Financial Advisors for 2021. In California, only two black-owned firms out of nineteen firms received this recognition.
In Scottsdale Arizona, Ekenna Anya-Gafu CFP, AAMS is recognized among the Best Financial Advisors for his responsiveness, friendliness, helpfulness, and detail. Bay Street was founded to advocate for diverse and emerging fund managers and entrepreneurs. In 2021, Bay Street was selected as a finalist out of over 900 firms across the US in the category of Asset Manager for Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR).
Sources
https://pitchbook.com/profiles/investor/13174-21#overview
www.swfinstitute.org/profile/5e408a418b88c345da0f920f
www.swfinstitute.org/profile/598cdaa60124e9fd2d05bed3
