There is a significant trend for Family Offices towards Impact Investing. One of the key reasons for this trend is the desire to align family values with investment decisions. Impact investing is an investment approach that looks to generate both financial returns and have a social impact that can be measured as well. While this… Read more »

Why are Single Family Offices hiring Chief Investment Officers and what are the challenges they are facing? With the significant growth in family offices and the increase in their wealth, they are looking to bring in more investment talent. The challenges that they are facing are the lack of available talent and how to compete… Read more »

Most recently Leon Cooperman, decided to close down his hedge fund, Omega Advisors, Inc and start a family office. Steven Cohen of SAC Capital Advisors also converted his hedge fund to a family office. The primary reason that Leon stated was because he didn’t want to spend the rest of his life “chasing the S&P… Read more »

Unfortunately, we have found that many of our Family Offices and privately held businesses are not aware of the recent Employment laws and how they may be affected by them. Since there are significant penalties for non-compliance with the recently enacted laws, we felt compelled to bring this to your attention. Eleven states have passed… Read more »

In light of the significant growth of existing Family Offices, the “start up” of new Family Offices and the scarcity of people with Family Office experience, compensation has become a key issue in attracting and retaining employees. For Executives in Family Offices, the use of long-term incentives is a fast growing trend. The most common… Read more »

Single Family Offices that have transitioned to the second generation have been trending higher towards alternative investments than the first generation. The alternative investments which include hedge funds, direct investments and private equity investments are becoming a larger part of the SFO portfolio. We are seeing a significant move towards direct investments. One of the… Read more »

Similar to other organizations, Family Offices have challenges that need to be addressed and some of them can be quite significant. Here are a few critical issues: -Ownership Conflicts: When the owners are not aligned regarding their interests and goals this can cause a significant amount of infighting. When this occurs, the trust may be… Read more »

As the wealth shifts to the “New Generation”, there is a myriad of changes that will occur. The children are expected to inherit over $60 trillion from their parents, however the next generation will operate quite differently than the previous generations. This generation will have very different methods of communication such as using smart phones… Read more »

One of the most significant issues facing Family Offices today is how to retain their senior executives and one of the key issues is compensation. The typical senior executive has been compensated by receiving a salary and discretionary bonus, similar to the other employees, however at a higher level. What has become more common today,… Read more »

Family office fraud is not something that you read about in the media due to the confidential nature of the industry. Many family offices function as investment managers, whereby a single employee of a smaller organization, may have access to cash and other assets. As a CPA, I have been trained to always look at… Read more »