Built, then handed over
The office is yours: your entity, your staff, your systems, documented to run without us. The handover is the deliverable, not the beginning of a dependency.
Family Office Setup
The family office, designed
and built, then handed over.
Structure, governance, banking, reporting, and the team,
established by one firm across jurisdictions. Yours from day
one, ours to build. By introduction. In confidence.
A family office is a company whose only client is the family.
Most are built the way no company ever should
be: piecemeal, and governed after the first mistake.
We design the office before anyone is hired: what it does,
what it never does, and what it costs. Then we build it, the
entity, the banking, the reporting, the governance, the first
hires, and hand it over documented. The firm does not manage
assets; we build the institution that oversees the people who do.
The mandate suits families after a liquidity event, offices that
grew by accident and need rebuilding, and principals deciding
between an office and the alternatives, one of which is usually
cheaper.
The models, compared.
Three ways to run a family's affairs, priced honestly before you build the expensive one.
Thresholds are genre conventions, not rules; the design phase runs your numbers.
The single-family office
The virtual office
The outsourced platform
What it is
The single-family office
Your entity, your staff, your systems
The virtual office
A lean core, senior providers around it
The outsourced platform
A multi-family platform, bought as a service
Cost reality
The single-family office
Commonly cited above US$100m of assets; running costs often near 1 percent a year
The virtual office
A fraction of the full build
The outsourced platform
Fees instead of payroll
Control
The single-family office
Complete
The virtual office
High, with less headcount
The outsourced platform
Shared with the platform's other families
Where it fits
The single-family office
Complexity that justifies an institution
The virtual office
Most families who think they need an office
The outsourced platform
Families who want oversight without operations
The most valuable sentence in this mandate is sometimes "you do not need one." We will say it in screening if it is true, and design the virtual version instead.
The build commonly covers: entity & jurisdiction / governance / banking & custody arrangements / consolidated reporting / investment policy & manager selection framework / the first hires
The office begins several ways.
After the liquidity event
The company is sold; the proceeds now need what the company always had: management, reporting, controls.
The office that grew by accident
An assistant, then a bookkeeper, then somehow eleven people and no mandate. Rebuilt properly, occupied throughout.
The first professional hire
The family is ready to institutionalise, starting with one right person inside one right structure.
The virtual office
The discipline of an office without the payroll: a lean core, senior providers, our design holding it together.
The office inherited
The founder built it around themselves. The next generation needs it rebuilt around a family.
The build.
Six phases, design before hires.
A build typically runs six to twelve months from design to handover.
I
Screening
The conversation first, under NDA if you prefer. The family, the assets, what exists today, and whether an office is the right answer at all. If it is not, we say so and design the alternative.
II
The design
The office's mandate written before anything else: what it does, what it never does, who it answers to, and what it costs. Every failed office skipped this document.
III
The structure
Entity, jurisdiction, and regulatory perimeter settled with counsel. An office that touches the wrong activity in the wrong jurisdiction becomes a regulated business by accident.
IV
The build
Banking and custody arrangements, consolidated reporting, systems, and the operating procedures, stood up and tested with real data before anyone relies on them.
V
The governance
The board or committee, the investment policy, the manager selection framework, the reporting cadence. The family decides; the office executes; the paper says which is which.
VI
The handover
The first hires recruited, the documentation complete, the keys
handed over. The office is yours, and it does not need us to run.
Standing counsel afterwards, if wanted, is a separate mandate:
Principal Advisory.
The order is the discipline: design, structure, build, govern, hire, hand over. Offices built hires-first spend their first three years being renovated while occupied.
Built, then handed over.
The office is the ring.
The family sits inside it; the providers stay outside it; we build it and leave.
Investment
managers
Private
banks
Counsel
The family office
The family
Accountants
& tax
Trustees
& fiduciaries
Insurers
& providers
Ladd & Co.
builds the ring, then hands it over
The providers deal with the office. The office answers to the family.
We are the dashed box: present for the build, gone by design.
The same ring a principal gets from Principal Advisory, except here the ring is yours: your entity, your people, your institution. We
are outside it, dashed, because the handover is the deliverable.
Why Families Engage Us
Nothing to sell you
The firm does not manage assets, take custody, or place products. The office we design has no fees hiding in it, because we have nothing to hide them in.
The design before the hires
Mandate, cost, and governance written first, so the first CIO joins an institution rather
than improvising one.
The governance, installed
Investment policy, manager selection, reporting cadence, and the line between what the family decides and what the office executes.
Cross-border, natively
The family in two jurisdictions, the assets in six. The office is built where it works, reporting on all of it.
Senior on the mandate
The people you meet are the people who design and build it. Nothing is handed down.
What we act on.
The firm acts for families and principals with the scale and complexity to justify an institution.
Typically following a liquidity event or the outgrowing of informal arrangements, and for existing offices that need rebuilding rather than renovating.
The firm does not manage assets, does not take custody, and does not run the office after handover; standing counsel afterwards is a separate mandate. Terms are set out plainly in the Engagement Agreement before any work begins.
Asked before most mandates.
Do we actually need a family office?
Maybe not, and we will say so in screening. The full build is commonly cited as justified above US$100m of assets and real complexity; below that, the virtual model usually wins on every measure except prestige.
What does one cost to run?
Running costs for a full single-family office are often cited near 1 percent of assets a year, which is the honest reason the design phase exists: to decide what you are buying before you staff it.
Do you run it afterwards?
No. We design, build, govern, and hand over. If the family wants standing counsel beside the office, that is Principal Advisory, engaged separately and deliberately.
Who do we hire first?
Almost always the operator before the investor: the person who makes reporting, banking, and administration true. The CIO question is easier to answer once there is an institution to join.
Family office or Principal Advisory?
An office is an institution you build and staff; Principal Advisory is a chief of staff you retain. Many families run on the second for years, and some never need the first. The screening conversation settles which, honestly.
What does it cost?
The commercial terms are set out plainly in the Engagement Agreement before any work begins, structured around the build. There are no surprises in our paperwork, and by design there are none hiding in the office's either.
No public references.
The firm does not name clients, counterparties, or terms.
Not in marketing, not in conversation, not after the fact. The
families best placed to vouch for the work are the reason
we will not ask them to. If discretion matters inside the family's
affairs, it should matter to the firm that builds the office
around them.
Adjacent to this mandate.
An institution,
not an inbox.
Every mandate begins with a conversation. Outline the family, what exists today, and what the office should do, in confidence. If the office is the right answer, we will say how the build would run. If it is not, we will design the alternative and say so. Request an Introduction, in confidence. No obligation. An NDA is available
before any detail is shared.