Do you know that 60% of family businesses have no idea what will happen when the existing head of the family decides to retire?
Do you know that 70% of families have failed to successfully transfer their capital from the second to the third generation?
Do you know that up to 60% of affluent families are worried about how to efficiently protect their assets?
In 2014, RSM CZ extended its portfolio of services to private clients. We have established a new company, RSM CZ Family Office, whose ambition is to use the long-term experience of the parent company to transfer the knowledge of corporate issues to individual company owners and help them consolidate their business activities and other family assets. At the same time, the RSM CZ Family Office will draw on the excellent know-how of Family Office services provided by partner firms within the RSM International network.
History of the Family Office
The history of the Family Office is as old as the world’s oldest families. Its history dates back to the Early Middle Ages when royal families, unable to manage their immense wealth alone, hired others to help them with administration. The modern history of the Family Office is associated with families such as the Rockefellers or the Rothschilds who had established great empires in the second half of the 19th century and faced the same problem: Too much wealth, too many interest groups, but only one goal: keeping the accumulated wealth, creating an environment for its primary protection and further development.
Emerging target group
Until recently, the Family Office services market has had no reason to exist in Central and Eastern Europe as there was no target group to make efficient use of it. But today, more than 25 years after the actual opening of the market and transformation of society, a group of extraordinarily successful individuals has slowly emerged who consider leaving their active business life and now face a very difficult choice: How to structure the property that has developed for 20 years so that it would be to the benefit and not to the detriment of the family and how to set the rules for the use and distribution of their property.
What the Family Office is
Traditionally, the primary objective of the Family Office is helping families find an appropriate structure for asset management, consolidating individual asset items into one whole and establishing rules applicable to the whole customised to the family’s requirements and needs. This requires the very close collaboration and communication of multiple professions from consultancy, law, taxes and accounting, audit, M&A and private banking. Family assets usually comprise cash as well as items such as shareholdings in companies controlled by the family, real estate used for housing purposes or constituting a source of the family’s income, and service companies serving specific tax and legal purposes.
Subsequently, the Family Office must gain the trust of the head of the family in order to assume liability for the management of the assets.
In both respects, the Family Office helps establish individual rules directed at one of the most important events in a family – the intergenerational transfer of capital. A successful transfer can bring peace and harmony to the family for a very long time. On the contrary, a poorly executed transfer may cause serious harm to the family’s communication, influence and assets.
If you are interested in learning more about this topic, drop in and meet us over coffee.
