One point of contact
The parties deal with us; you deal with decisions. The load between them is carried, not forwarded back to your inbox with a question mark.
Principal Advisory
A standing chief of staff for
principals and families whose affairs span jurisdictions.
The banking, the structures, the reporting, the counsel, and the
counterparties, coordinated by one firm that answers only
to you. By introduction. In confidence.
Past a certain point, a principal's affairs become a company with no staff. Principal Advisory puts a chief of staff on it.
The mandate is standing, not transactional. We hold the whole
picture, keep the calendar of obligations, brief and instruct
the advisors, bring decisions to you prepared, and carry them
out once made.
It suits principals whose operating business and personal
balance sheet have grown into each other, families between
the founder's desk and a family office, and anyone whose
affairs crossed borders faster than the arrangements behind them.
The mandate begins several ways.
After the liquidity event
The company is sold and the structure is suddenly the job. A chief of staff before a family office, or instead of one.
The affairs outgrow the week
Obligations in six jurisdictions, run from an inbox between board meetings. The week stopped being long enough some time ago.
The company has a CFO. The principal does not.
The operating business is professionally run. The balance sheet that owns it is run from memory. The mandate closes that gap.
Before the family office
The discipline of an office without building one. If the office comes later, its foundations will already exist, documented.
The standing brief
Transactions, structures, disputes, and the unexpected, handled inside a relationship that already knows the whole picture.
The mandate.
Six phases into a standing rhythm.
The first ninety days build the map and the order; the mandate then runs on a quarterly cadence, and on the phone whenever it needs to.
I
Screening
The conversation first, under NDA if you prefer. The principal, the shape of the affairs, what is held where, and what is heaviest. If we are not the right firm, we say so.
II
The map
Everything, written down once: entities, accounts, advisors, obligations, deadlines, documents. Most principals have never seen their own affairs on one page. The map is the first deliverable, and it stays maintained.
III
The order
What the map exposes, fixed in sequence: the missing, the duplicated, the mispriced, the quietly dangerous. Banking rationalised, advisors briefed, the calendar of obligations built.
IV
The rhythm
The standing cadence: a recurring review, reporting you will actually read, decisions brought to you prepared with a recommendation, and carried out once made.
V
The matters
Transactions, structures, and situations as they arise, run inside the mandate by a firm that already holds the context. Each one starts
from the map, not from a briefing call.
VI
The continuity
The map, the documents, and the institutional memory maintained so the affairs survive the advisor, the banker, and eventually the founder. Nothing lives only in someone's head, including ours.
The value is the standing context. An advisor briefed from zero costs you a week of explaining and misses whatever you forgot to say. A firm that holds the whole picture moves on a phone call.
One point of contact.
One point of contact
between the principal
and everyone else.
Counsel
every jurisdiction
Accountants & tax
filings & structures
Private banks
accounts & facilities
Ladd & Co.
The principal
Investment
managers
appointed on your terms
Trustees
& fiduciaries
registers & duties
Insurers & risk
cover & claims
The parties deal with the firm.
The principal deals with decisions.
Every relationship remains yours: your counsel, your banks, your managers. What changes is that they are briefed, instructed, and held to a timetable by someone whose only client in the room is you.
Why Principals Engage Us
The whole picture, held
Entities, accounts, obligations, and documents on one map, maintained. Nothing depends on your memory, or on ours alone. It is written down.
Nothing to sell you
The firm does not manage assets, take custody, or place products. Advice with nothing behind it but the advice.
Senior, standing
The same senior people, year after year. Context compounds, and you never explain your own life twice.
Cross-border, natively
Affairs in six jurisdictions are the mandate's normal condition, not its exception. The firm's offices and counsel network already sit where your affairs do.
Discretion, engineered
Need-to-know instructions, clean information rights, and a perimeter around your affairs that every provider signs before they see inside it.
The division of labour.
What a standing mandate actually covers.
The firm carries
You decide
Banking & treasury
The firm carries
Accounts rationalised, facilities negotiated, signatories controlled, positions reported
You decide
Where the money sits, and what it is for
Structures & entities
The firm carries
Registers, filings, renewals, and the map kept current with counsel in each jurisdiction
You decide
What is owned, where, and why
Reporting
The firm carries
One consolidated picture, on a cadence, in a form you will actually read
You decide
What to watch, and when to act
Advisors & counsel
The firm carries
Briefed, instructed, chased, and held to their quotes and their timetables
You decide
Who advises you
Transactions & matters
The firm carries
Prepared, negotiated, and executed inside the standing context
You decide
Whether to proceed
The calendar
The firm carries
Every obligation, deadline, and renewal tracked, so nothing arrives as a surprise
You decide
Almost nothing. That is the point
The scope is settled in the map phase and written into the Engagement Agreement. It grows and shrinks as the affairs do.
The mandate commonly touches: private banking / trusts & fiduciary / tax filings across jurisdictions / property & assets / insurance & risk / aviation & marine / philanthropy / the next generation
What we act on.
The firm holds a limited number of standing mandates at any one time; the model does not work stretched.
It suits principals and families with affairs across jurisdictions, typically an operating business or a recent liquidity event behind them, and more advisors than coordination.
The firm does not manage assets and does not take custody. Terms are set out plainly in the Engagement Agreement before any work begins, as a standing arrangement reviewed annually, sized to the scope rather than the assets.
Asked before most mandates.
Is this a family office?
No, and for many principals it is what makes one unnecessary. A family office is an institution you build and staff; this is a chief of staff you retain. If the office is the right answer later, building it is a separate mandate we also run.
What does the firm actually do, day to day?
It renews the facility before the bank calls you. It instructs counsel and reads what comes back. It prepares the decision paper, sits beside you when you make the call, and closes the matter out. We do the work between your decisions.
Do you manage the money?
No. The firm does not manage assets, take custody, or place products. Managers and banks are appointed by you, on terms we help you negotiate, and reported on by us without a conflict in the room.
What happens to my existing advisors?
They stay, and they get better. Good advisors do their best work when they are briefed properly, instructed clearly, and held to a timetable. We replace nobody who is good, and we will tell you plainly if one of them is not.
How do we start?
With the map. In the first ninety days everything is written down once: entities, accounts, advisors, obligations, documents. Most principals tell us seeing it on one page was worth the mandate by itself.
What does it cost?
A standing arrangement, set out plainly in the Engagement Agreement before any work begins and reviewed annually. It is sized to the scope of the affairs, not to the assets, which is a different and usually smaller number than a percentage of your balance sheet.
No public references.
The firm does not name clients, counterparties, or terms.
Not in marketing, not in conversation, not after the fact. The
principals best placed to vouch for the work are the reason
we will not ask them to. If discretion matters inside your
affairs, it should matter most to the firm that holds all of them.
Adjacent to this mandate.
One person should hold
the whole picture.
It does not have to be you. Outline the shape of the affairs in confidence. If we are the right firm to hold them, we will say how
the first ninety days would run. If we are not, we will say that too. Request an Introduction, in confidence. No obligation. An NDA is available before any detail is shared.