As wealth continues to grow, more and more Irish families are searching for formal structures that pool and protect their family wealth.
We understand that decisions around your family's wealth are important – you've worked hard to build and maintain it. That's why we've built an expert team of private client professionals to help you manage your ownership today as well as your legacy. For many that begins with building or reimagining your family office.
Many families turn to family office structures to grow and preserve their legacy and wealth over the long term.
A family office is a unique organisation with many inherent advantages such as wealth protection, succession planning, spreading of investment risk and tax optimisation – all of which are important when responding to the challenges posed by an increasingly complex world.
Family offices provide an investment structure that protects family wealth. Using appropriate governance structures, the family office can preserve wealth for future generations while providing access for the current generation. It can also ensure that investment returns aren't degraded through excessive tax leakage.
A family office is also a great platform for the coordination of philanthropic goals, allowing the family to support strategic and appropriate cultural, sporting and ESG-related projects for example.
It is important to implement the appropriate tax and legal structures to achieve this protection. Our dedicated community of solvers can help your family establish its family office structure and determine the correct location so that it is appropriately optimised from a tax and governance perspective.
As well as providing a tax-efficient professional investment structure, family offices can play a crucial role in the transition of family wealth from the current generation to the next. This is achieved by involving the next generation in the family office and supporting them through education on investment, philanthropy and family values for example.
In addition, a well-structured family office is designed to mitigate capital acquisitions tax (gift and inheritance tax) exposures for the next generation. Our private client tax team bears this in mind when formulating an appropriate structure.
Family offices vary considerably depending on the size of the family, the location of family members, the age profile of family members, the location of assets, the objectives of the family and the level of wealth to be managed.
Complex family offices have entities in different geographies but as the world becomes more global, even a simple family office structure will typically hold assets in multiple countries. Family members may also be located in different jurisdictions and have different tax profiles as a result.
A well-structured family office takes such cross-border issues into account. With offices in 156 countries, we have access to tax professionals around the world who can help manage cross-border issues efficiently and effectively.
Our experience of working with family office clients, often with a global footprint, means we understand the importance of long-term thinking and competing stakeholder demands.
We offer a broad range of services for individuals and families, and can provide an integrated approach to wealth management.
The management of a family's wealth should be guided by personal, philanthropic and commercial objectives. It is also important to ensure that the family achieves all available tax savings in a compliant and legal manner. However, the tax landscape is continually evolving and tax efficiency is often challenging to achieve.
Our team of private client professionals can work with you to implement an efficient tax and legal structure around your wealth, for both investment and business assets. In developing the optimum structure, we leverage the breadth and scale of resources available within PwC and its global network.
A successful family office strategy will allow for the transfer of wealth to future generations and to charity in an efficient manner. It will also facilitate the smooth transition of responsibility from each generation to the next. However, this is becoming an increasingly complex task as the values of older generations and new continue to diverge and the faultlines between profit and social good become more pronounced.
We can help you design and implement a plan to prepare the next generation for the responsibility that comes with significant wealth, and help you reconcile any differences that may occur. We advise on domestic estate planning, international estate planning, gifting and broader philanthropic strategy, trusts, and employee or management ownership.
Wealthy families often accumulate their wealth over long periods of time. The challenge then is to help it grow in value using an investment strategy that reflects the risk profile and investment preferences of the family. In an increasingly volatile economic environment, family offices need to have access to the best financial advice in the market.
Our strategic financial planning services bring together the various services needed to provide an end-to-end wealth management offering. We aim to understand your investment goals, the resources at your disposal, the risks you are willing to take, and any future demands on your capital. Using this information, we can then create a financial planning strategy to meet your family's investment objectives.
Certain family offices remain active in the mergers and acquisitions market, and aim to grow their wealth by building their businesses. Value creation is the ultimate goal, whether you are repairing value from market disruptions or creating value as you evolve with industry changes.
Successful deals demand a balance of smart deliberation and strategic decisiveness. We use our global network of experts and our own deep knowledge to create value for our clients. Our team of deals experts can help you identify your next acquisition target, determine whether the transaction will create sustainable added value for your family office, and assist in determining the right time to sell and the process for any such sale.
