Over the last five years, cyberattacks have moved away from targeting millions of dollars in a single attack to targeting transactions of $100,000 or less at smaller organizations. With limited security and lack of awareness, family offices are attractive targets for cybercriminals. By taking a business-minded approach and understanding the strategy and methodology driving prevalent cyberthreats, family offices as a risk manager can more clearly identify vulnerabilities in their cybersecurity protocols and risk profiles.
Resource Search
Media is a great tool for storytelling. Photo albums can reveal ancestral details, documents can highlight past events, and film can rejuvenate old memories. All these items contribute to your family’s legacy. Although we see the value in this irreplaceable media, few of us are doing enough to protect it. That is why we are exposing the top threats to your physical media to show what you can do to protect it for your family legacy.
While it is impossible to predict every catastrophe, thorough pre-event preparation and post-event response planning can help reduce the likelihood of loss and limit the severity of damage that can’t be avoided. This reference guide and sample planning forms based on decades of experience will help you proactively keep art and other valuables out of harm’s way.
The key to success of any risk management plan is the development of an “all risk” approach that takes the entire family enterprise into account. Through a survey of more than 200 family office executives at single and multi-family offices, an uncovering of some worrying approaches has surfaced around the risks that family offices face, particularly cyber risk, family-related risk, investment risk, and employment-related/insider risks.
The rising criticality of information security at every level has made security a core necessity for most organizations, with many companies concerned about the risks related to a remote workforce. In this webcast, we review the technology challenges that family offices face and explore today’s cybersecurity threats, the cyber claims, and building a family office cyber program. We also discuss the misconceptions about cybersecurity and the importance of information security governance.
Business divorces are often messy. The reasons vary—personality-driven disputes, disagreements over business direction, or timing and distribution of earnings. When majority owners seek advice of the company’s attorney to formulate a plan to force out a minority owner, the company expects this advice to be covered by the attorney-client privilege. But in Illinois, minority members of LLCs may be able to obtain copies of communications between the LLC’s managers and its attorneys.
Those with ownership stakes in privately held businesses, partnerships, or family offices need to closely collaborate with and trust others. But when there is a disagreement or dispute, it can create a situation where someone is looking for ways to force out owners of non-controlling shares and seek the advice of the company’s attorney to formulate a plan. For an Illinois LLC and their majority members, there are steps that can protect otherwise privileged communications from disclosure to minority members in advance of and during litigation.
Solving disputes among business partners and owners in a privately held business can quickly become complicated matters that end up calling for access to an LLC or corporation’s privileged communications. Only in rare circumstances can there be access to those privileged communications. Most courts apply a fact-intensive test that is difficult to satisfy. A closer look at the rule explains how it applies to Illinois corporations and business entities organized in other jurisdictions.
Business closures have been immensely difficult for companies of all sizes during the COVID-19 pandemic. But reopening is proving difficult, too, especially given the ever-changing nature of the pandemic. As cases have surged in new parts of the country, businesses have been forced to reassess their operational plans in both the near- and long-term. Owners and executives are paying close attention both to customer and employee safety. And businesses must be mindful of potential legal ramifications of their decisions.
On this podcast episode, a discussion with a top bankruptcy and restructuring lawyer provides insights on the ways COVID-19 causes financial distress to businesses, the parties involved, and why it may take some time before companies become distressed. It also addresses new rules that streamline the bankruptcy process for smaller businesses to help them survive, and insurance coverage issues arising in these distressed situations.