Selecting or reviewing the location of your family office is a highly complex and challenging exercise. As your family grows and gains assets and business interests that are often outside your home country, a host of factors can be crucial to your choice of location. These include considerations around reputation, regulatory frameworks, tax regimes, access to skilled professionals and professional services, political and economic stability, quality of infrastructure, and more.
Advisor Thinking
Resource Search
When it comes to effectively transferring assets, the Grantor Retained Annuity Trusts (GRAT) is a popular estate planning strategy that can reduce the tax liability. In this interview, three attorneys discuss the benefits of GRAT and the securities law case, Donoghue v. Smith, involving that strategy.
Investors have been looking for a recession amidst rising interest rates and expectations for slowing growth, but continued growth in much of the economy and resilient investment performance in 2023 has made for a very murky economic puzzle going forward. Exogenous factors such as geopolitical instability, deglobalization, and continuing risk of a U.S. government shutdown add complicating risk factors to the economic outlook.
Starting January 1, 2024, the Corporate Transparency Act (CTA) will go into effect. All entities formed or registered to do business in the United States will need to either confirm they qualify for an exemption from the CTA’s reporting requirements or timely submit a beneficial ownership information report to the U.S. Treasury’s Financial Crimes and Enforcement Network (FinCEN). Learn more about the regulatory compliance of the CTA in this high-level overview.
For leaders of founder-owned companies, simply making the decision to sell or bring in an outside investor can be anxiety inducing. The transaction process itself is often filled with apprehensive moments—arguably none more so than the potential of sensitive information leaking. This primer helps business owners understand how to avoid leaks, how they might emerge, and how to handle them. It details three common scenarios: (1) when there are signs of a possible leak; (2) when signs of a leak are clearer; and (3) when media coverage appears imminent.
As auction sales level off in 2023 from the highs reached a year ago, the art market recalibrates with more conservative pricing, risk management, and an unquenching demand for A+ works. Heading into the fall season, art prices are expected to continue stabilizing. And while some collectors operate more conservatively, others will see opportunities in acquiring fresh work by mid-career artists. In addition, there is strong momentum and innovation in the broader art ecosystem, such as mergers and acquisitions, the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), and an evolving museum landscape.
Creating portfolios that are customized to a family’s unique investment goals and risk tolerance requires ingenuity and flexible thinking. However, the execution of risk management should be more systematic. Ultimately, the effective investors employ a risk management framework that accounts for potential risk at every stage of the investment process—one that considers four crucial components: strategic risk, implementation risk, portfolio monitoring, and communication.
The Senate Bill 54 (the “SB 54”) was signed into law in California and will take effect March 1, 2025 for all investments made during calendar year 2024. The law will require “covered entities” to report the demographic information of “founding team members” of all companies in which the covered entity has invested. The law is meant to address the lack of venture capital funding flowing to diverse founders and is the first of its kind.
The advances and integration of artificial intelligence (AI) in financial markets are raising novel risks for broker-dealers and investment advisors. The risks include, but are not limited to conflicts of interest, market manipulation, deception, fraud, data privacy, and discrimination. Recognizing the risks, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) have already proposed laws and established a specialized team to address emerging issues and risks around AI.
The global economy faced a high degree of difficulty in 2023, but it earned high marks with continued growth, labor markets remaining strong, and declining inflation amid the ongoing expansion. The soft-landing narrative has considerable allure, but the three-year-old expansion is vulnerable. Higher interest rates are exacting an increasing toll, and the cycle has been challenged by an unsettling series of unfortunate events. In this special report, the Northern Trust Economics team shares its outlook for growth, inflation, employment, and interest rates in the year ahead.