Industry thought leader on maximizing the value of family wealth management. Family Wealth Report is proud to present Families first, a series of occasional columns on family-wealth advice by Charles Lowenhaupt, chairman and CEO of Lowenhaupt Global Advisors (LGA), a St. Louis, Mo.-based advisory to ultra-high-net-worth families.

With more than 30 years' experience counseling ultra-high-net-worth families through LGA and its affiliated law firm Lowenhaupt & Chasnoff, Charles is well qualified to initiate what he hopes will become an ongoing conversation with other high-net-worth advisors on strategies and best practices around effective family wealth management. To that end, Charles invites your comments, questions and suggestions.

The world seems to be overflowing with private wealth. Although the U.S. still seems to lead the way, the wealthy in China, India, Japan, South America, Europe are getting wealthier and more numerous by the day. Everywhere you look statistics show the rich getting richer.

Many of them are shrewd businessmen and women who have built wealth from scratch; others are inheritors of wealth who are trying to escape the cycle of "shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves" -- or "clogs to clogs" or "paddy to paddy" as the case may be. Some have created wealth in financial products and some in fundamental businesses like real estate or concrete. Some are in developed countries and some in developing countries.

What do these wealth holders have in common? They need advice, they need investments and they need financial services. And, no less important, each needs to understand, and be able to say, what their wealth is for. Once you've peeled back the layers, you find that wealth owners generally aren't as interested in preserving their wealth or creating more of it as they are in employing it to the tangible benefit of their families and communities. |image3|

Honest answer

This is the first of an occasional column for Family Wealth Report. I want to use it to consider how our industry is helping -- or hindering -- the process of family-specific wealth management. What does the family want to accomplish with its wealth? What is the role of each family member? And how are family advisors making it easier or harder for the family to accomplish its goals?

I will draw on my own experience to find answers to the challenge of helping our businesses by helping our clients. I will look at issues of product, provider size, the globalization of advice, and the ideal dimensions of open architecture.

I also hope to engage in a discussion with you of what it means to be an advisor to very wealthy families and individuals and to share views on aspects of your work gives you the most satisfaction and your thoughts on ways to maximize our value to the families we serve?

For the most part though, this column will be a personal exploration of one practitioner's experience and values. If it inspires some of you to view things in a new light, I will have accomplished my purpose.

Let's close this one with an anecdote that may strike a chord with you. A man came to me for advice on how to save taxes. He was an "accidental" wealthholder -- he'd put some money into a friend's start-up and 20 years later had $800 million in the company's publicly traded stock. I assured him we could help him manage his taxes. To serve him better, however, I explained that I wanted him to help me understand what, overall, he wanted of his wealth.

For a moment the man just looked at me. "I have no idea," he said finally. "What are my choices?" -FWR

The illustration for this column is a detail from a Japanese woodblock print in the Charles A. Lowenhaupt Collection.

Contact CHARLES LOWENHAUPT

.