Much of my work and much of my time is focused on helping families achieve their goals. Most often those goals are focused around business succession and the inheritance of family wealth.
But sometimes other kinds of projects come along. Sometimes my clients are businesses rather than families and sometimes the goals are business goals rather than family goals.
This is not really that surprising. Trusts are an important business tool in some countries, being used as SPVs, as investment vehicles, for securitisation, and in many other ways.
In Central Europe these uses are much less common. However, it sometimes happens that business models from the US, the UK, or elsewhere can be successfully translated into a local context, delivering solutions that are easier, simpler, safer, and more robust than the ‘traditional’ way of doing things.
So despite some misconceptions to the contrary, trusts can sometimes (but not always) be fantastic tools for solving business problems. For me, such projects are especially interesting and enjoyable as they require lots of creative thinking and sometimes the development of new and innovative solutions. These projects always involve working as a team – especially with clients’ management, lawyers, and tax advisers. It is always great to work with people who are open to new ideas and new solutions to old problems – rather than resisting change because “that’s the way we’ve always done it”.
Here are examples of some of the projects I am working on at the moment or have completed over the past few months. Using;
- a foundation as the launch pad for an innovative listed IT company
- a trust as a tool to provide fidelity protection of advance client deposits
- a foundation as a holding vehicle for a large cyber currency portfolio
- a trust as a tool to provide a hybrid employee benefit program and virtual stock option scheme
I really look forward to implementing more similar projects in the future.