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The Complete Family Office Handbook: A Guide for Affluent Families and the Advisors Who Serve Them
Discover new insights on how to setup, manage, and advise wealthy families and their family offices
The Complete Family Office: A Guide for Affluent Families and the Advisors Who Serve Them, 2nd Edition represents the newest update to an essential series. This book prepares the members of wealthy families to collectively manage, sustain, and grow their wealth across multiple generations. It also assists professionals who advise families to better serve their needs.
This book teaches those who advise family offices and wealthy families on:
- How to setup, structure, and advise a family office
- Current compliance, fiduciary and risk management practices for a family office
- Forward-thinking investment management, estate planning, and private trust company considerations
- Fresh insights on philanthropy, legacy, and impact investing
- Best practices to managing family wealth education and preparing next generation owners
- New insights on family governance, strategic planning, and succession
- Methods to create a family constitution, mission, and vision for families and their family offices.
The Complete Family Office Handbook provides the most comprehensive, current research, practical guidance, and approaches from leading family offices from around the globe and illustrates, by way of practical case studies and examples, how families can effectively manage their wealth for the long term.
The Complete Family Office: A Guide for Affluent Families and the Advisors Who Serve Them, 2nd Edition represents the newest update to an essential series. This book prepares the members of wealthy families to collectively manage, sustain, and grow their wealth across multiple generations. It also assists professionals who advise families to better serve their needs.
This book teaches those who advise family offices and wealthy families on:
- How to setup, structure, and advise a family office
- Current compliance, fiduciary and risk management practices for a family office
- Forward-thinking investment management, estate planning, and private trust company considerations
- Fresh insights on philanthropy, legacy, and impact investing
- Best practices to managing family wealth education and preparing next generation owners
- New insights on family governance, strategic planning, and succession
- Methods to create a family constitution, mission, and vision for families and their family offices.
The Complete Family Office Handbook provides the most comprehensive, current research, practical guidance, and approaches from leading family offices from around the globe and illustrates, by way of practical case studies and examples, how families can effectively manage their wealth for the long term.
480 pages, Hardcover
First published August 7, 2013
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
August 11, 2026
A worthwhile reference, but not a particularly deep one.
The most valuable insight is that managing substantial family wealth is ultimately an exercise in institutional design. Portfolio construction is only one layer. The harder problem is deciding who has authority over capital, under what constraints, with what information, through which structures, and how those decisions survive changes in people, markets, and generations.
The discussion around governance, ownership, succession, professionalisation, risk, and the relationship between family and investment structures is useful because these issues tend to compound quietly. Poor governance can destroy the advantages of good asset allocation; misaligned incentives can become more expensive than investment mistakes; and complexity without a clear decision architecture becomes a liability of its own.
Where it falls short is in the areas where judgment matters most. There is not enough depth on capital allocation under uncertainty, concentration versus diversification, liquidity architecture, balance-sheet thinking, institutional incentives, and the trade-offs between control, return, resilience, and optionality. Those are the questions that become increasingly important once wealth is large enough that preserving flexibility can matter more than maximising headline returns.
Ultimately, it works better as a map of the territory than as a source of differentiated thinking. Its breadth is impressive, but breadth inevitably comes at the expense of the depth required to examine the difficult edge cases and second-order consequences of managing substantial family capital.
Solid, useful, and comprehensive—but not deep enough to deserve four stars.
The most valuable insight is that managing substantial family wealth is ultimately an exercise in institutional design. Portfolio construction is only one layer. The harder problem is deciding who has authority over capital, under what constraints, with what information, through which structures, and how those decisions survive changes in people, markets, and generations.
The discussion around governance, ownership, succession, professionalisation, risk, and the relationship between family and investment structures is useful because these issues tend to compound quietly. Poor governance can destroy the advantages of good asset allocation; misaligned incentives can become more expensive than investment mistakes; and complexity without a clear decision architecture becomes a liability of its own.
Where it falls short is in the areas where judgment matters most. There is not enough depth on capital allocation under uncertainty, concentration versus diversification, liquidity architecture, balance-sheet thinking, institutional incentives, and the trade-offs between control, return, resilience, and optionality. Those are the questions that become increasingly important once wealth is large enough that preserving flexibility can matter more than maximising headline returns.
Ultimately, it works better as a map of the territory than as a source of differentiated thinking. Its breadth is impressive, but breadth inevitably comes at the expense of the depth required to examine the difficult edge cases and second-order consequences of managing substantial family capital.
Solid, useful, and comprehensive—but not deep enough to deserve four stars.
January 28, 2020
Was interesting to read about who would start a dynasty, and some of the jobs in it. But not what I expected. I like to read how people are advised and inside information for the wealthy. Not the case here.
July 15, 2024
“Most fear process, believing it will be overly restrictive and constraining; the reality, however, is that process gives order, sets boundaries and expectations, and can help when precedents are achieved… If the sailboat avoids the reef, the passengers do not notice”.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 25, 2025
A good read, structured and enlightening for a legal professional. I enjoyed the portions on region specific trends and wish it could have been explored.
November 8, 2015
Хрестоматийная книга на тему Семейных Офисов. Категория Family Office является наиболее широкой и имеет много трактовок, но наиболее точно основную функцию Family Office в книге изложена цитатой: "... As confidant, they provide objective, unbiased advice that helps develop and empower the family members to be their best with their wealth. The family office takes on the role of guardian by saying "no" to inquiries from friends and relatives, as well as others, in a way that protects the family's financial assets while preserving these personal relationships. The role of confidant or consigliore is perhaps one of the most critical functions of the family office. In many respects it is akin to have a second set of eyes that can always see what you are seeing and help to validate or clarify the course at hand..."
Очень хорошо в книге раскрыта тема преемственности поколений. Даже описаны психологические дилеммы, с которыми сталкиваются главы семей и их наследники.
По поводу преемственности, очень интересно обыграна поговорка: All wealthy families are concerned about the strength of the global proverb: "shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations".
Также порадовало известное высказывание Уоррена Баффета: " the perfect amount of money to leave them is " enough money so that they would feel they could do anything, but not so much that htey could do nothing".
При описании разных типов Family Office автор сделал очень интересное обобщение об американском типе - сосредоточенном на wealth/investment management и на европейском типе - сосредоточенном более на юридическом и административном сопровождении семей...
В целом рекомендую книгу, как одну из наиболее детально проработанных в области семейных офисов. Ставлю четыре балла, т.к. немного затянуто изложение, да и примеры могли бы быть более показательные.
Очень хорошо в книге раскрыта тема преемственности поколений. Даже описаны психологические дилеммы, с которыми сталкиваются главы семей и их наследники.
По поводу преемственности, очень интересно обыграна поговорка: All wealthy families are concerned about the strength of the global proverb: "shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations".
Также порадовало известное высказывание Уоррена Баффета: " the perfect amount of money to leave them is " enough money so that they would feel they could do anything, but not so much that htey could do nothing".
При описании разных типов Family Office автор сделал очень интересное обобщение об американском типе - сосредоточенном на wealth/investment management и на европейском типе - сосредоточенном более на юридическом и административном сопровождении семей...
В целом рекомендую книгу, как одну из наиболее детально проработанных в области семейных офисов. Ставлю четыре балла, т.к. немного затянуто изложение, да и примеры могли бы быть более показательные.
September 26, 2023
Must read for all of those managing a family office or institutionalizing and better managing their investments.
September 11, 2016
This book is a good overview of the Family Office, its history, and a high level overview of how they work. There are some very interesting sections discussing some structures for Family Offices, but as always it's good to seek professional advice. The book is also useful for those who want to work for a family office since it discusses some of the behind the scenes day to day activities that take place. I found the material to also be applicable to the middle class should someone want to start a dynasty trust or similar vehicle. It proves to be an interesting read for an obscure topic to most people.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews