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
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