With its rich harvest of entrepreneurs, an economy growing at 8 percent, and one of the fastest rates in the world

for minting millionaires, India is an attractive market for wealth managers. Yet marquee brands of private banks are either treading very softly or negotiating strong headwinds. Economic uncertainty, corruption scandals, and a sliding stock market are souring the appetite of the rich for wealth advisory services. Indias old rich have traditionally been reluctant to take professional help, while the young millionaires are only just warming up to private bankers. Despite these challenges the Indian market is too attractive to ignore. Indias current 62,000 households with a minimum net worth of $5 million will rise to 219,000 by 2015, according to research by Indian rating agency Crisil and investment bank Kotak Mahindra. As wealth managers look for ways to successfully tap into this lucrative market, one concept beginning to gain currency among the rich is that of family offices. A luxe advisory service, family offices straddle the space between pure investment advice offered by financial institutions and the personal and family needs of high net worth individuals. Family offices offer advice on estate planning, wealth protection and taxation with many even scouting for holiday homes, sourcing rare wines and antiques, or dealing with an errant grandchild. Family offices manage upward of $3 trillion worldwide according to Cerulli Associates, a U.S.-based research firm specializing in the financial services industry. Multi-family offices run by international banks and institutions like UBS, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley Smith Barney and others have about $350 billion in assets, according to Cerulli. In India, the market for family offices is nascent yet growing, with 940 such offices expected in the country by 2015, according to a report by Markets and Markets, a Dallasbased research firm. With wealth exploding and the economy transiting from scarcity to prosperity, we see a huge demand for estate planning, wealth protection, taxation advisory and more, says Himanshu Kohli, co-founder of Client Associates, an early entrant into the Indian family office space in 2002. In less than a decade, his firms client list has grown from five to 400. International banks like Credit Suisse, HSBC and Standard Chartered Bank have also set up family office services to cater to the growing Indian market. Morgan Stanley recently opened its fifth office in India at Chennai to cater to the wealth management needs of the ultra rich.

J. P. Morgan is also set to tap the wealth management business in India that will offer specialized advice to the rich. Indias ultra rich with increased global exposure and dynamic business needs are now demanding specialized advice on business continuity, succession planning and philanthropy. We see a strong demand for family offices in India, says Rahul Malhotra, Head of South Asia, J.P. Morgan Private Bank. Indias wealthy have been traditionally reluctant to share information on family wealth. This is leading many well-known Indian families to open their own family offices rather than going to private banks for wealth management services, say industry observers. Azim Premji, chairman of Wipro, the third-largest IT company in India, recently set up an in-house family office called PremjiInvest with $1 billion of his personal wealth. Analjit Singh, the promoter of Max Group, which runs healthcare and insurance businesses in India, has set up a team of close confidants to preserve and conserve family wealth. Many other industrialists like Indias richest man Mukesh Ambani of Reliance Industries, whose personal wealth has been estimated at $27 billion by Forbes, have done the same. Indias rich are hands-on when it comes to managing their wealth and like to have full control over their investment decisions, which is another reason they prefer family offices over private banks, say market observers. Indias super rich expect personalized services but prefer to keep stronger control on investment decisions as compared to their Western counterparts, says J.P. Morgans Malhotra. When a traditional CFO has acted as a gate-keeper of family wealth and there is a historical aversion to paying for advice, we do face a challenge of educating the family patriarch but this also translates into a promising opportunity for family offices, says Richa Karpe, CoFounder of Altamount Capital, a multi-family office business set up in 2008. The India family office space holds huge potential. Only around 20 percent of the high net worth market has been penetrated, according to Markets and Markets. Further, it estimates that $128 billion of inter-generational wealth transfer will take place in India in the coming decade. Competition between wealth advisory firms is thus set to increase. In the longer term international banks will have a bigger share in this market due to their global expertise in the family office space, access to a wider product range and a strong infrastructure support, says J.P. Morgans Malhotra.

However, Karpe says standalone family offices have a distinct advantage over bank-run family offices, as (they dont have) conflicting interest to peddle in-house financial products faced by private bank advisors. Clients, therefore, get objective advice customized and tailored to their needs in the boutique firms. Clearly, the battle lines are drawn.
There was a time a couple of years back when every financial service group was trying to get into the mutual fund industry. A boom and a bust later, theres a hot new opportunity that has caught their fancy. At least three new players Quant Capital, Barclays Wealth and DSP Merrill Lynch have planned forays into the family office practice.ASK Wealth Advisors, Kotak Wealth Management and Bajaj Capital are among the big names that have started family office services in India. A family office manages the assets of the ultra wealthy and provides advice and services related to the legal and taxation aspects of managing family wealth. It helps clients acquire wealth, build and protect it, use it and pass it on to the heirs. While Barclays Wealth acknowledged the opportunity that many others are also eyeing, it was non-committal about any plans to set up a dedicated division for the segment. Quant Capital said it would be launching a family office practice soon while DSP Merrill Lynch did not comment on the story. Barclays is already an established player in the wealth space internationally and has been providing clients with many of the services that family offices provide. Sources suggested it is now looking to start a dedicated service for the family office opportunity. Barclays Wealth in India has been providing family wealth structuring and advisory solutions for high networth and ultra high networth families in line with its global offering. This has been our core India strategy, Satya Bansal, chief executive at Barclays Wealth, said in an emailed response to a query on the companys plans for the family office space. Anurag Mehrotra, of head of wealth management at Quant Capital, admitted that such a plan is in the works. We hope to become active in the segment in another 6-9 months, he said. Reliance Capital had recently announced an intention of acquiring a controlling stake in Quant. Sandeep Tandon, CEO, Quant, had told DNA Money then that he would be using the money raised to expand and strengthen operations in various segments, including wealth management. DSP Merrill Lynch is one of the key players in the wealth management space and also has a major presence in investment banking and the brokerage space. It is now said to be looking to enter the family office practice, say market sources. This opportunity in the family office space is seen to be significant over the long-term. Karvy Private Wealth, one of the latest entrants into the field, had come out with a report suggesting that there is a total of Rs 14.10 lakh crore in private promoter wealth in India in the listed space. We estimate that Rs 5.3 lakh crore of such wealth will undergo the process of transfer in the next decade, the report said. Barclays Bansal also acknowledged the opportunity in wealth transfers, putting the estimate even higher than others. The opportunity in inter-generational wealth transfers is large. The overall wealth of different promoter groups and business families would be in the range of $400 billion (Rs 19 lakh crore). Not all families are ready to for the services and it might take decades to cover the spectrum, but the potential is quite substantial, he said.

A family office provides the HNI with a team of professionals, which oversees his entire financial needs, including asset allocation, investment policy, cash flow management, performance reporting, plan execution, trust administration and succession planning. Some family offices also provide advice on philanthropic activities. This relationship usually stretches beyond the lifetime of an individual, extending financial guidance to several generations of the family. Usually, the minimum net worth of an HNI, who needs such a service, is Rs 50 crore. If you have a net worth lower than this, the services of a wealth management company will suffice. Various private companies like Altamount Capital, as well as institutional players, such as Kotak and Barclays, have set up specialised family offices to cater to the ultra-HNI segment. Though an established concept in the West, family office has gained credence in India only in recent years as newer generations of big business families started looking for professional expertise to manage their wealth. A recent study on HNIs conducted by the Barclays Wealth and Dun & Bradstreet revealed that most family-owned businesses grapple with sustained leadership and governance issues due to continuous changes in technology, markets and competition. Almost 93% of the respondents believe that corporate governance is important for long-term business continuity and, hence, the need for professional help in managing the business. It is this need that has provided an impetus to the concept of family offices in India. Services offered "On paper, all facilities provided by family offices are the same, but in reality, each player is at a different expertise level as this concept is still developing in India. So, before choosing a family office, check if it can provide access to investment managers across the country and their level of expertise," says Ashish Khetan, head of family office, Kotak Wealth Management.

There are three categories of such companies in the country. The first is the independent, boutique firm, which provides services to several families and is known as a multi-family office. The single-family office provides in-house services to big business houses. The third category comprises institutional companies, which also have specialised family offices, such as Kotak, RBS and Barclays. While family offices usually offer their clients a one-point window to the financial world, some of them provide purely advisory services, such as those offered by Altamount Capital. "The transactions are not routed through us. We only offer advice on certain investments and the final call is that of the family," says Richa Karpa, co-founder and executive director, Altamount Capital. On the other hand, Kotak Family Office also takes care of investments for the families. "We oversee the entire process of execution of the overall portfolio. If there's a deviation, we question why it is happening," says Khetan. Though, there is a slew of services on offer, one does not necessarily have to opt for each and every one of them. So, when you approach a family office, be clear about the services you are looking for. Is it just investment options or do you want the whole package, including tax accounting and succession planning? Karpa points out that family offices are not product-driven models, but service-driven ones. "We do not have our own products to offer clients. Our job is to identify wealth managers for families and find private investment options for them," says Karpa. Almost all family offices customise their services according to the business group's needs. For instance, the family office of RBS has four broad verticals-banking, investment, wealth and estate planning, and lending. "As a part of wealth planning, we also offer advisory services focused on philanthropy and family business. Every family has its own needs and, hence, we offer customised services that cater to them," says Prateek Pant, head of products and services (India), RBS Private Banking. Family offices also provide consolidated reports for the entire wealth of the family. "For an extremely wealthy family, there may be several sources of income. We assess all of these and provide a consolidated report to the family," says Karpa.
The number of high net worth individuals (HNIs) has grown impressively leading to a similar rise in Multi-Family Offices. A family office is a unique capital source for private equity and venture capital funds so its important to track the development of this industry. India had the second-highest increase in high net worth individuals in 2006 and 2008. India now has an estimated 84,000 families with net assets of at least $1 million (roughly Rs 5 crore). Family offices have emerged as a helpful way to manage that wealth. What makes MFOs popular is that they earn money on the fee clients pay and ability to work with other financial services companies. This is absent in wealth management companies that earn income from selling in-house products. Ultra-rich families are increasingly thinking that product-driven wealth management companies do not serve purpose, said Richa Karpe, director, investments at Altamount Capital Management, a multi-family office firm. Family office is at the top of the pyramid in wealth management space. It is for people who have liquid financial assets over Rs 50 crore, said Rajesh Saluja, CEO, ASK Wealth Advisors. For any amount below that, the cost of managing the assets will shoot up. Most of the companies agree with this. Client Associate is the only exception that takes families on board with investible surplus of Rs 10 crore. Family offices are private wealth management advisory firms that serve ultra-high-net-worth clients. According to the Family Office Exchange, there are more than 3,500 family offices based in the United States. By offering a complete outsourced solution to managing finances and investments, including budgeting, insurance, charitable giving, family-

owned business, and wealth transfer and tax services, these offices set themselves apart from traditional wealth management firms. Although they vary in their level of service, most typically invest heavily in consultants, databases and analytical tools that help them conduct due diligence on money managers or optimize a portfolio of investments for tax purposes. In this article, well review the top three trends affecting family offices, including the rapid growth of the family office industry, the types of family office services provided, and the increasingly sophisticated use of hedge funds and alternative investments by both single and multifamily offices. Family Office Facts There are two types of family offices: single-family offices (SFOs) and multifamily offices (MFOs). Single family offices serve one wealthy family, while multifamily offices operate more like traditional private wealth management practices with multiple clients. Multifamily offices are much more common because they can spread heavy investments in technology and consultants among several high-net-worth clients instead of a single individual or family. According to the Greycourt White Paper Establishing A Family Office: A Few Basics, the minimum size for a family office can vary, because If the goal is simply to provide family-wide accounting and bookkeeping, a family with as little as $50 million will find it economical to establish an office. On the other hand, a fully integrated family office is probably accessible only to very large families, typically those with more than $1 billion.

Abraham is equally loyal to his money managers, Sam Katzman and Paul Tramontano, who have looked after his assets for more than 15 years. When Katzman and Tramontano left Citigroup Inc.s Smith Barney brokerage unit -- now Morgan Stanley Smith Barney -- in 2007 to form Constellation Wealth Advisors LLC, Abraham also jumped ship. Constellation is a family office, a luxe kind of financial adviser first established by the Rockefellers, the Guinness brewing family and other dynasties. Family offices manage money, handle taxes and, in some cases, buy private jets, scout vacation homes, hire butlers and find drug treatment programs for wayward progeny, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its September issue. The latest financial titan to set up a family office is George Soros. In July his hedge fund, Soros Fund Management LLC, told clients it would during the rest of the year return money to all outside investors, amounting to less than $1 billion of its $25.5 billion in assets, and would then operate as a family office. Single family offices are not required to register with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. These days, you dont have to be a Carnegie or a Soros to have a family office cater to your every whim. If you have as little as $5 million, you can take your pick of hundreds of multifamily firms. Constellation, with $4 billion under management, is tied withPitcairn, based in Jenkintown, Pennsylvania, for No. 23 in Bloomberg Markets first annual ranking of family offices.

HSBC No. 1

The list, which ranks 50 firms by assets, is topped by HSBC Private Wealth Solutions, a unit of London-based HSBC Holdings Plcs private bank. Private Wealth Solutions oversees $102 billion for families in 18 offices around the world. New York-based Bessemer Trust Co. is No. 2, with $44.5 billion under management. Seven of the top 10 providers of family-office services are owned by or affiliated with big banks. In addition to HSBC, the list includes Switzerlands UBS AG (No. 3), San Franciscobased Wells Fargo & Co. (No. 5) and Atlanta-based SunTrust Banks Inc., which bought 70 percent of Palm Beach Gardens, Florida-based GenSpring Family Offices LLC (No. 7) in 2001. The amount of money managed by the 50 top firms increased 17 percent, to $477 billion, in 2010 from 2009. The number of multifamily-office firms in the U.S. has doubled in the past 10 years, according to Wheaton, Illinois-based Family Wealth Alliance LLC, which provides consulting services to the industry.

Growing Families
Banks and independent firms pursue the business because one client can beget many more as a family grows, says Anna Nichols, a managing director at the Family Office Exchange, a Chicago organization that represents 330 wealthy families. They can be clients for generations, Nichols says. To make the list, the normally secretive companies had to serve more than one family and provide the amount of assets they oversee and the number of clients they serve. Those that declined werent included. The tussle in the business is between banks and independent firms. The boutiques say the banks are more likely to break the cardinal rule in the industry: Dont flog your products. The big firms have become manufacturing companies -- manufacturers of financial products, Constellations Tramontano says.

Conflict of Interest
Pushing clients to buy shares of mutual funds or hedge funds run by a bank is a conflict of interest, says G. Randolph Webb Jr., chief executive officer of Signature, a family office in Norfolk, Virginia, with $2.2 billion of assets under management. Capital is moving away from the product-driven side of the industry, Webb says. HSBC offers its families both its own funds and those managed by outside firms, says Mary Duke, head of global family wealth in New York. They are not compelled to choose us, she says.

HSBC Private Bank, which manages funds for some family- office clients, will no longer maintain overseas accounts for U.S. residents, the bank announced in July. The move comes amid a crackdown by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service and Justice Department on U.S. residents who use offshore accounts to avoid taxes.

Letters to Clients
Before it announced the global change of policy, HSBC had begun sending letters to U.S.domiciled clients with accounts in India, saying they would need to close their offshore accounts. In April, a New Jersey businessman named Vaibhav Dahake pleaded guilty to conspiring with bankers at HSBC to hide money in India from the IRS. Asked about the Dahake case, HSBC spokeswoman Juanita Gutierrez said, HSBC does not condone tax evasion, and we have no further comment. Independent registered investment advisers such as Constellation controlled 11.5 percent of the $13.4 trillion U.S. wealth-management market in 2010, up from 9.5 percent in 2007, according to data from research firm Aite Group LLC in Boston. Brokers from the largest banks manage 38 percent, down from 41 percent in 2007, Aite says. By any measure, catering to the wealthy is a growth business. The number of individuals worldwide with $30 million of liquid assets to invest rose 10.2 percent to 103,000 in 2010, according to a June report by Cap Gemini SA and Merrill Lynch Global Wealth Management, a unit of Bank of America Corp. That $30 million club controls $15 trillion of capital in total.

Fee Squeeze
Getting clients with big money doesnt mean youre going to make big money, says Elizabeth Nesvold, managing partner at Silver Lane Advisors LLC, a New York-based investment bank that specializes in mergers and acquisitions of wealth-management companies. The heavy increase in competition means many new family offices are willing to cut rates, she says. Most charge annual fees equal to a percentage of a familys liquid assets; 0.35 to 0.75 percent is the normal range, according to the Family Office Exchange. Labor-intensive work such as taking a clients son or daughter on a college tour is often included in the fee, Nesvold says, and if those tasks multiply, profits go down quickly. Bessemer had a profit margin of 13 percent in 2010 compared with 21 percent at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS), whose internal family office is called Ayco Co. (Goldman chose not to participate in the ranking.)

Personal Service

Bessemer is owned by its employees and the descendants of Henry Phipps, a partner ofAndrew Carnegie. Phipps started the firm in 1907 to manage his proceeds from the sale of Pittsburgh- based Carnegie Steel Co. Bessemer now serves more than 2,000 multigenerational families. John Hilton, CEO of Bessemer, says the advantage of working for a private firm like his is that there are no shareholders to satisfy. And it means he can go the extra mile for his clients. One of his employees once waited in line at the Department of Motor Vehicles in New York for a client who had just moved to the city and needed a license. The Bessemer staffer called the client as she reached the front of the line. No. 1 HSBC Private Wealth Solutions has grown partly by catering to Asias newly rich. Last year, the region housed 3.3 million millionaires, according to Cap Gemini and Merrill Lynch, compared with Europes 3.1 million.

Asias New Billionaires

Bernard Rennell, global head of HSBC Private Wealth Solutions, whos based in Hong Kong, says his group targets families with $500 million or more. Asias new billionaires often come seeking help with succession plans, Rennell says. HSBC came up with a bespoke solution for an Asian tycoon who wanted to pass along a controlling stake in his company to his seven children without giving all of them a chance to meddle in the companys day-today workings. The banks family offices have gotten bigger partly by buying boutiques. Bank of Montreal bought the name and client assets of MyCFO Inc., founded by technology entrepreneur Jim Clark, in 2002. Now called Harris MyCFO, its No. 9 in the Bloomberg Markets ranking, with $18.3 billion. Atlantic Trust, No. 11 with $14.8 billion, is an amalgam of three wealth managers that Atlanta money-management company Invesco Ltd. put together from 2001 to 2004. Kirk Bowman, a venture partner at Accel Partners, a venture-capital firm in Palo Alto, California, says he looked at the big investment banks before handing his fortune over to MyCFO. Its better to have someone whos investment-vehicle agnostic as opposed to someone whos got an unnatural incentive to put you in their product, Bowman, 45, says.

Nimble Investor
Unlike the big banks, Constellation is nimble enough to pounce on unique investments, Tramontano says. Recently, Abraham and other clients invested in a partnership thats buying apartment buildings across the U.S. The venture is projected to deliver a 7 percent

cash flow yield, without the fees that come with doing such an investment through a fund. Abraham even got to meet the partnerships managers before committing his cash, he says. Its that kind of personal touch that makes family offices popular, Tramontano says. The strategy has certainly worked for Constellation. It has gone from zero to almost $4 billion in assets in just four years.
The number of family offices secretive firms that manage the financial affairs of Europe's richest families has proliferated in the past few years as ultra-wealthy clients have become increasingly disenchanted with mainstream private banks and wealth managers. But family offices don't suit every investor's needs. They also cost a fortune to run.

They vary in size some are small outfits employing just two or three people for administrative tasks. Others are fully-fledged investment offices employing 10 to 20 professionals responsible for day-to-day investment decisions. European families with their own investment offices include the Sainsburys, the Pears and the Guinnesses. Wharton Global Family Alliance, a specialist unit at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, estimates there are around 1,000 single family offices in the world. Paul Pratt, managing director of the London branch of the Family Office Exchange, an advisory consultancy, thinks this is an underestimate. He says: "A more realistic estimate is likely to be closer to 1,000 just in Europe." Cost-Efficiency Families need to be exceptionally wealthy to consider setting up their own offices. "To really get the most cost-effective pricing on investment products and afford the best staff, half a billion dollars in assets is probably a good rule of thumb," says Pierre-Alan Wavre, the head of the multi-family office at Pictet, a Swiss private bank. Greycourt, a US-based financial advisory firm to some of America's wealthiest families, has estimates it takes a $1 billion fortune to justify a "fully integrated" family office, handling the full array of investment, accounting, legal, educational and concierge services. A survey of European family offices by Merrill Lynch and Campden Research found that the average cost of running an office is around 0.6% of assets under management. The bigger the family office, the cheaper the costs, said the report.

For those that are persuaded by the rationale for multi-family offices there is a plenty of choice with more than 100 independent firms in Europe alone. But making an informed choice can be difficult. There is no independent body that evaluates the performance of multi-family offices, although Asset Risk Consultants, which tracks the portfolios of many wealth managers including some multi-family offices does offer some insights for those based in the U.K. through its private client indices. Multi-family offices often have a longer-term investment horizon than more traditional wealth managers. This resulted in some missing out on the equity market rebound last year. Marcuard Family Office, a multi-family office based in Zurich, says its medium-risk portfolios were up an average of 12% last year, compared with the 30% achieved by the MSCI World Index. But it hopes its longer-term perspective will prove right. "We like physical assets, like gold and agricultural land," says Jonathan Guest, a partner at Marcuard. William Drake, co-founder of London-based Lord North Street Ltd., a multi-family office that accepts clients with at least 25 million in liquid assets, thinks private equity might offer a good opportunity over the long term. He says: "The merger and acquisition market is starting to revive and initial public offerings will follow that should spark private equity into action." Marc Hendriks, chief investment officer at multi-family office Sand Aire, also sees opportunities in private equity, especially investments linked to distressed assets. But he still likes equities, despite last year's surge. A long position in equities last year helped Sand Aire to post buoyant returns in 2009 for most of its portfolios. Mr. Hendriks said returns were between 17% and 31% depending on the client's risk profile.

Costs for staff alone can run into the millions a year. Typically a fully-integrated family office would have a chief executive, chief finance officer, chief investment officer, at least two investment analysts, four accountants, one controller and five administration staff. Some might also employ a lawyer.

"The cost of employing a good chief investment officer will run into at least 100,000 a year before bonus," says Mr. Pratt. A chief executive for a family office will typically cost around 150,000 plus bonus a year. Those with only tens or a few hundred million dollars are increasingly turning to private investment offices which cater for a small number of like-minded families. Sometimes these are single family offices that have decided to take on third party assets. Some multi-family offices accept as little - these things are of course relative - as 20 million in liquid assets. Multi-family offices claim to have the advantage of greater resources. Daniel Pinto, founder of multi-family office Stanhope Capital, says: "In a single family office, it is often difficult to have the breadth and depth of expertise required to build truly diversified portfolios. Screening and selecting managers across asset classes and regions takes a large team." Specialists say the financial crisis has prompted more wealthy families to turn away from the large global banks to family offices. Bespoke money management solutions have become increasingly appealing for investors that have been hit by the credit crunch. Critics argue that family offices concentrate management risk and that wealthy investors should still talk to other fund managers to get a more balanced range of advice. Thierry Lombard, sixth generation of the Swiss banking family and managing partner of the private bank Lombard Odier & Cie, says: "A family office cannot be a substitute for a wealth manager - it cannot have the breadth and depth of expertise, resources and experience that a bank can provide." Some wealthy families don't like the idea of family offices. For an unseasoned investor they can be "fraught with dangers and potential disappointments", according to Mr. Pinto. The family that controls Merck, one of Europe's biggest pharmaceutical companies, thinks the money is better spent on the company. Frank Stangenberg-Haverkamp, chairman of the board of partners of Merck and a member of the 11th generation of the family that controls the company, says: "When a family has invested everything in their company and there is no money lying around in need of an investment then you are not in need of a family office."