Family Offices and Multifamily Offices.

To have built a conspicuous capital with one’s own hands is certainly a result to be proud of, but it’s also one that creates a kind of financial situation that is not quite so easy to manage. This is why entities such as family offices were born. Family offices are firms that offer assets management services to rich families and that therefore have a central role as far as management and coordination of the family capital are concerned.

Acting within the field of assets management consulting, family offices offer the following services:

Specialized planning and consulting: Financial, strategic, tax, and philanthropic (charities, organizations, etc.) areas;

Investments management consulting and support: Strictly financial area (risk management, investment analysis, assets allocation, transactions and sales);

Administration services: General services having to do with relationship aspects of assets management (accounting, managing of relationships with providers of certain services as well as of relationships between the members of the family in their beneficiary roles);

Family offices are a precious resource to families that need to manage great assets. There are two kinds of family offices:

• single-family offices take care of the interests and assets of one family;
• multifamily offices take care of the interests and assets of more than one family.

The Italian reality of family offices offers a few particular cases.

For example, there are cases in which single professional figures or firms have the function of family office for the interests and assets of one family, despite not being registered as family office, thanks to the relationship of complete trust they have built with the family itself. This happens thanks to the Italian industrial reality being mostly made up of small or medium businesses.

In other cases, multifamily offices are managed by members of the families.

Generally speaking, single-family offices and multifamily offices are valuable allies to rich families for the management of their assets.