Family Office Best Practices

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Empowering the Board to Evaluate Performance
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A challenge for many wealth owners is understanding how to assess the costs and value of the family office. This 2012 FOX Fall Forum session provided family members and family office executives a framework to determine and communicate seven critical issues managed through the family officeand featured highlights from the FOX 2012 family office benchmarking study.Some key takeaways:

Managing Art Wealth: A Guide for Family Offices
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A complete and well-developed art service platform can be a competitive advantage for a family office, and as competition increases these platforms will be more global, transparent and diverse in their offerings. Knowing these trends and changing your office to accommodate them can set a family office on solid ground with often demanding collecting families.

Art Storage: More than Just Art
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The term "art storage" is something of a misnomer as it is not solely focused on the storage of paintings and sculpture. Art storage applies to the safekeeping and preservation of a wide variety of property, everything from prints to jewelry to couture fashion to wine. This paper details seven crucial characteristics you should seek in an art storage provider.

Video Family Biographies: Bridging Generations and Preserving the Legacy
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Video biographies are an emerging instrument many ultra-high-net worth families are commissioning to help preserve their history. The biographies allow the wealth builders, or their progeny, to discuss, in their own words, important topics that are of concern to them – family governance issues, estate and tax strategy, philanthropic arrangements and the education and mentoring of their children and grandchildren. This paper examines in detail the merits of commissioning a video family biography to help protect and preserve the family legacy.

Succession Planning for Family Office Management
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As the baby boomers retire, many family office and multi-family office executives in key roles who have served the same clients for years will be leaving their roles. This change has significant implications for family members who lean on these leaders for insight and comprehensive knowledge of the family’s interests, advisors who look to them to coordinate services and the staff who rely on their leadership. In this 2012 FOX Fall Forum session, Jill Barber of CYMI, Ltd.

Generational Shift: Servicing the Millennials
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As family leadership transitions from one generation to the next, it’s not unusual for servicing needs to change to support the younger clients. Understanding the service requirements of different client life stages allows advisors and family office managers to adapt their service model to the needs of different generations, and reduce the risk of such shifts.

Helping Your Clients Evaluate a Multi-Family Office
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Just a couple of decades ago a fortune of $50 million was more than sufficient to justify directly employing a staff of accountants and investment managers to keep track of the family finances, including the holdings of various trusts and foundations. Today, the “break even” point is closer to $250 million and climbing. Hence, many former single-family offices have grown into multi-family offices (“MFOs”).

Social Media: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
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Once a “fad” for tweens, teenagers and young adults, social media has morphed into a long list of websites and other applications that are frequented and used by people of all ages. Used correctly, social media can reap many benefits for families of wealth and their businesses. However, inappropriate use can wreak havoc on families' reputations and can result in other costly damages. This paper outlines the most popular types of social media as well as its good, bad and downright ugly aspects.

Employee or Independent Contractor? Your Chance to Come Clean
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The decision of whether to treat someone working for you as an employee or an independent contractor is not always crystal clear. With increasing frequency, IRS is assessing tax, interest and penalties in situations where they believe workers have been incorrectly treated as independent contractors. This white paper examines the legal and tax considerations of treating a worker as an independent contractor and how to rectify past errors of categorization.

Social Media in Investment Management
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Social media has moved from the fringes of techno geek culture to the mainstream with astonishing speed. The terms “social media” (or “social networking” or “Web 2.0”) is a catch-all for a variety of digital services, usually free to users and carrying advertising. Technology has always outpaced regulation and social media is no exception. Regulators in the US and Europe have so far issued only general regulatory guidance and many firms are skeptical about what steps they should take – if any – to start their foray into social media.