Abstract

Over the last decades, there has been an increase in the number of affluent individuals in the Americas, Europe, and Asia (Beaverstock, Hubbard, and Short 2004; Rosplock 2014). Many of their fortunes originate from the complete or partial sale of a family business (a “liquidity event”), inheritance, ongoing entrepreneurial and investment activities, or “new” sources of private wealth based on work in the financial services industry that has led to a client segment including, for example, investment bankers, hedge fund managers and corporate lawyers with high salaries and bonuses (Beaverstock, Hall, and Wainwright 2013; Wessel et al. 2014). Be they “old” multi-generational business families or new financial elites, they are often served by family offices. These specialist institutions aim at nurturing the continuity, harmony, and coordination of the families and their businesses (Daniell and Hamilton 2010; Gilding, Gregory, and Cosson 2015) and exist in different forms: while a single-family office provides services typically to a blood-related family, a multi-family office may serve multiple, unrelated families (Decker and Lange 2013).