Family offices manage the fortunes of the world’s richest families. They preserve and grow their money. A very select and discreet environment in which amounts rub shoulders with peaks.
Advantageous taxation, discretion, tailor-made services… Switzerland is among the most attractive countries on the planet in terms of wealth management for particularly wealthy clients.
The Family Office Forum and its two days of conferences and discussions are held each year at the Dolder Grand in Zurich, a prestigious hotel institution. “We meet a certain number of people who work for families, bankers, investment funds and a host of bizarre and varied services, such as managing the number of passports held,” explains Gilles Erulin, director of family office and participant of the event, in the Basik show on RTS on Monday.
Top secret sector
In this environment, there is a well-known adage: live happily, live hidden. “You won’t find them on social media or anywhere on the internet, especially if they have children. They just want to be protected,” explains Katja Mülheim, co-founder of Prestel & Partner, the organizing company of this event. created almost 15 years ago. It takes place in Switzerland, but also in Singapore or Dubai. It is present in 10 countries in total, all very popular with wealthy people.
“At every event we organize, we welcome more than 100 family offices, but I stick to this level. I don’t want to have more, because for us it is very important that people get to know each other at the within the network. It may seem trivial, but people really make friends here,” she adds.
Make friends, but above all business… In recent years, the number of big fortunes has exploded and this environment is booming.
>> Read about it: The fortunes of billionaires have more than doubled in a decade globally et The fortunes of the rich at an all-time high, study shows
Multi et single offices
There are two types of family offices. The “multi”, in which several fortunes are managed by the same office, and the “single”, in which only one family is managed. Switzerland has between 250 and 300 “single” offices. They manage nearly 600 billion francs, which makes them major players in the country. A third of their investments are made in Switzerland. Where exactly? Mystery: they publish almost nothing about their activity.
In this opaque world, there is one who was willing to open its doors to RTS: Capitalium, a multi family office based in Geneva. Here, four people manage the assets of around thirty different families for a total of one billion francs. “From 15-20 million Swiss francs, we have the capacity to properly serve a family,” explains Alain Zell, co-founder of Capitalium, in the preamble.
-Lawyers and tax specialists
They also offer assistance in creating a single family office, but for that, you need to have hundreds of millions of francs. Its clients are mostly entrepreneurial families with tailor-made treatment of their portfolio.
“We call on specialists, such as lawyers or tax specialists, in Switzerland and also abroad, to offer the best advice to the client. The difference with a wealth manager, who only takes care of “a segment like the management of a portfolio deposited in a bank, is that the Family office has a much more global view”, continues Alain Zell. It also relies on this network of partners to set up projects, such as an art gallery or a stable.
Not all regulated
Multi family offices like this one are regulated by FINMA, the Swiss financial watchdog. But this is not the case for single family offices. “If you are rich and you manage your fortune yourself, you can do with it what you want. You therefore do not need a regulator, that is to say a public power, to interposes between you and yourself”, explains Pascal Saint-Amans, recognized specialist in tax evasion. Thus, even Europe, which is nevertheless a “fan of regulation”, has no regulations either, he points out.
For him, the priority is not to regulate them, but above all to tax them. “We are more concerned with questions of tax policy, that is to say the level of inequality which refers to the question of more taxation for the rich. This is the real question today,” he believes. . However, on this point, Switzerland is not really there.
>> To go further on the taxation of the super-rich, read: Cécile Duflot: “We must not only tax the richest more, we must tax them fairly”
Personal support services
Some family offices go well beyond the financial aspect and offer personal support services: they organize them internally or delegate them to external companies. This is the work of luxury concierge services like that of Myriam Al Sayed-Duti and her team at the Geneva Airport private jet terminal. 50% of their clients are family offices. “We ensure that the arrival is well organized so that the customer is taken care of immediately upon arrival at their destination,” she explains.
Ultra-luxury is the art of bending over backwards. “We can absolutely start the morning by organizing a safari for a family who wishes to travel for an exceptional stay and end with a request or a call for tenders for prestigious goods such as leather goods, watches, etc.”, continues Myriam Al Sayed-Duti, whose company also recruits domestic staff and offers multiple ultra-personalized services. Without family offices, his business would not be doing as well as it is today.
Jeanne Gerbault
