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Family office Lowenhaupt reaches around the globe

Thomas Coyle

9 December 2008

Lowenhaupt Global Advisors makes Australia site of its first non-U.S. office. Lowenhaupt Global Advisors (LGA), a St. Louis, Mo.-based advisory to high-wealth, multigenerational families, has opened an office in Sydney, Australia -- its first formal establishment outside the U.S. The move is part of LGA's developing strategy to improve service to clients in non-U.S. jurisdictions.

"When you say you're global -- as in Lowenhaupt Global Advisors -- then the question is always, 'Well, what do you have outside the U.S.?'" Now we have something," says LGA's chairman, CEO and president Charles Lowenhaupt. "Today's families of substantial wealth are based in multiple jurisdictions around the world and expect their firm to have a global understanding of their needs."

In fact, LGA -- an offshoot of the law firm Lowenhaupt & Chasnoff -- has been working with international families for generations. But getting in on the ground in Australia, like its formation early this year of a "Global Council" of international wealth managers, is meant to support the firm's new focus on providing large, often multi-jurisdictional, families with customized wealth-management strategies.

Finding the fit

"Australia is a wonderful place for this business," says Lowenhaupt. "Not unlike America, it's a country with some recent wealth and some very old wealth, and a dynamic, melting-pot tradition."

There's also a lot of interest in the multifamily-office concept in Australia -- where the best known commercial advisory to high-wealth families is probably the Myer Family Office, a 12-year-old enterprise founded on a much older private family office of the descendents of Sidney Myer, a Belarusian immigrant to Australia who built a department-store empire in the first few decades of the last century.

"People we're talking to in Australia are asking, 'How do we fit wealth into our lives," says Lowenhaupt. "Our message about the importance of 'family, philanthropy and freedom'" -- a troika Lowenhaupt jokingly calls the three Fs of high-wealth management -- ''really resonates with them."

Stuart Black, a senior partner of the Sydney-based accountancy Chapman Eastway and a member of LGA's Global Council, has been named CEO of Lowenhaupt Global Advisors Australia (LGAA).

While leading LGA's Australian business, Black will continue as head of Chapman Eastway's business-consulting practice.

As CEO of LGAA, Black will work closely with Lowenhaupt and with his Chapman Eastway colleague Sean Cortis, who has been made COO of LGAA -- a function listed as an "outside appointment" in Cortis' bio on Chapman Eastway's website.

LGA underlines that it's in business to collaborate with its clients' advisors -- including their accountants -- rather than attempt to supplant them. Further, LGAA is an affiliate of LGA and not in any respect an extension of Chapman Eastway.

Next phase

But like LGA and St. Louis-based Lowenhaupt & Chasnoff, Chapman Eastway has been advising wealthy families for more than 100 years. As a result, Black says the LGAA team "is as knowledgeable as any about managing significant wealth for Australian individuals and families."

LGA's Australian office will be followed by additional non-U.S. offices, according to Lowenhaupt. But he declines to say where LGA will set up shop next.

"We don't say, 'Let's find a place and open an office,'" says Lowenhaupt. "We look at where we have clients or where we know trusted advisors of families."

Nor is LGA's Global Council only (or even primarily) a testing ground for future LGA affiliates. "We know people who share our vision in London, Geneva, New Delhi and Kuala Lumpur" -- cities in which Global Council members are established -- "but we also know people in other places who aren't Council members who share our vision."

As to the timing of LGA's next offshore move, Lowenhaupt says he's familiar enough with the inevitable delays associated with business expansion of any kind to keep his own counsel on that front; for now anyway.

Lowenhaupt's grandfather Abraham Lowenhaupt founded Lowenhaupt & Chasnoff in 1908 as the first income-tax law practice in the U.S. That was five years before U.S. lawmakers authorized an income tax. Over the decades Lowenhaupt & Chasnoff's focus on taxes has made it a primary advisor to wealthy individuals and families in the U.S. and abroad.

In addition to its new office in Sydney and its mid-western headquarters, LGA has an office in New York. -FWR

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