UK law firm to offer family-office services for HNWIs

Up until now, UK law firms have tended to focus squarely on the provision of their core business of legal services, save for some fairly low level company secretarial and trustee work where that was a necessary adjunct to client legal work.  Many of the offshore law firms, by contrast, have developed extensive ancillary businesses to their legal practices, offering a full range of fiduciary and family office services, and these have in many cases proved to be very lucrative ventures, in some cases eventually dwarfing their law firm roots.  There are now signs that UK firms may be starting to follow suit.

In 2010 Mishcon de Reya launched a global concierge service for its high net worth clients in conjunction with Quintessentially.  It has now announced that it is to go a step further and launch a private client business for high-net-worth individuals, offering private bank relationship management advice and asset reporting in addition to tax and structuring advice.  It is not yet clear to what extent this will also involve the firm in agreeing to take on fiduciary roles for client structures, but it is a clear attempt to move into the realms of family office services.  It is believed that the initiative is targeted at the higher end of the market, focusing on individuals and families with assets of more than £50m.

Mishcons managing partner Kevin Gold said: “With so many high-net-worth clients that themselves constitute the equivalent of multinational companies, we can see a market to service them as such, with an offering that goes beyond their legal needs.”

It will be interesting to see whether Mischon’s next step is an alliance with one of the offshore law firms or fiduciary businesses, as it would seem to be a logical progression.   A very significant proportion of the VHNWI population utilizes offshore structures in tax planning, and a family office offering is likely to be more coherent if the onshore and offshore advice and fiduciary elements could be combined.

 

Mischcons intend to set up their new business as a separate company and as such do not need to convert to an alternative business structure (ABS) in order to achieve it.  However, the firm has separately applied for an ABS licence to give it the option of taking outside investment and allowing non-lawyers in the business to join the partnership.