The Family Office Book: Investing Capital for the Ultra-Affluent - Hardcover

Wilson, Richard C.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1118185366 ISBN 13: 9781118185360

Publisher: Wiley, 2012

Synopsis

Key strategies for running a family office for fund managers

Understanding the basics of the family office industry is essential if you want to succeed in establishing a successful fund for a wealthy family. That's where The Family Office Book comes in. Outlining key strategies for family offices, from what a family office is to how the industry operates, and important global differences, the book is packed with interviews with experts from leading family offices.

Providing readers with need-to-know tips and tools to succeed, The Family Office Book gives current and future practitioners everything they need to know about this popular segment of the financial industry.

• Includes investment criteria, presented as a roadmap showing how several family offices are allocating capita
• Outlines strategies for fund managers of all types, including mutual funds, real estate funds, private equity, and hedge funds on raising capital in this field
• Features interviews with the most famous and sought after family offices to give real-life examples of successful family offices in action

A comprehensive and reliable resource, The Family Office Book details exactly how family offices are choosing investment managers and why, and how, to break into the industry.

About this title

From the Author:

This book contains well over $20,000 worth of advice in direct audio transcript form from top family office chief executive officers, chief investment officers, portfolio managers, and executives.  In addition to my investment of over 400 hours in writing this text we have surveyed over 40,000 members of the Family Offices Group association, and conducted over 40 hours of audio interviews to create this resource.  The global views in this book were formed by meetings with dozens of family offices in Moscow, Sao Paulo, Singapore, Tokyo, Monaco, and Liechtenstein.  Our goal is to make this a central resources for teams of family office professionals in all corners of the world.  
I wrote this book for single and multi-family office professionals and ultra-high net worth individuals who want to further explore how family offices operate and deploy capital. 
My current role involves providing the best-of-breed fund managers to family offices. Years ago, when I first started working with family offices, I wanted to learn more about this industry. Much to my surprise, I found there were very few books or web sites dedicated to the subject.  
After several years of working with family offices, I started FamilyOfficesGroup.com, the first free-to-access educational web site on the family office industry. Since then, we have been posting new educational resources to the web site each week, and we have seen the association's membership grow from five initial members to its current level of 40,000-plus members from all over the world.

Objective: The objective of this book is to provide you with a $1,000 multimedia training experience for just the small price of this book. In my attempt to create this value, I provide you with insights on the operations, capital deployment best practices, investment processes, portfolio allocations, investment committees, and fund manager selection processes of family offices using instructional videos, audio MP3s, and other unique resources you simply won't find anywhere else.
Is This Book Right for You?

While this book was written primarily for family office professionals, ultra-high net worth individuals and fund managers will also gain a better understanding as to why family offices exist, what function they serve, and how they manage capital. Moreover, this book will assist you in making a more-educated decision when selecting a family office to meet your needs. Understanding how family offices invest their capital is important for the healthy growth of the industry so family office executives and entry-level professionals can see how their peers are investing. It is also important for ultra-high net worth individuals to know what to expect, how a family office may invest their money, and what questions to ask when they sit down to hire a family office. 
What This Book Is Not

The main purpose of this book is to explore how family offices operate and deploy their capital through fund manager selection, cash management, and portfolio construction. This book is not a quantitative, statistical research study, or set of recommendations that family offices should follow. You will not find PhD-level mathematical models showing how to calculate the true risk of particular asset classes, or in-depth financial models of efficient portfolios, as there are dozens of books already written on these important topics. Instead, this book contains valuable insights from some of the world's top family offices.
What Is Unique about This Book?

Most books present only one perspective, opinion, or angle on an issue or industry. Rarely does a single individual's expertise present the complete diverse picture of what is going on regionally or globally within any industry, however, making those books an incomplete resource. 
To prepare for this book, I read and reviewed each of the other family office books currently in print. Many of them are valuable and worth reading; they provide valuable quantitative statistics, research, and case studies in a few instances. I know for certain, however, that this book is unique; you get to read the direct thoughts of dozens of global family offices, including several that are frequently listed as being among the largest and most successful top 50 family offices in the world. 
To write this book, I leveraged the 40,000-plus member family office association that we manage, the Family Offices Group. To make sure this book presented ideas as diverse as the family office industry itself, we spoke with 'thousands of family offices and conducted recorded interviews with dozens of single and multi-family offices to create both the Family Office Monthly Newsletter, our training and certificate program on family offices called the Qualified Family Office Professional (QFOP) program, and this book. The interviews were conducted with family offices from Australia, Israel, Dubai, Monaco, United States, Switzerland, Singapore, and many other locations. Each of these interviews lasted for 30 to 90 minutes, and, once transcribed, the interviews in total resulted in 225,000 words' worth of family office advice and insights. The average family office executive we interviewed had 22 years of experience, so in total this book and our newsletter constitute 756 years of industry experience. 
This is the only family office book that contains family office interview transcripts, MP3 audio interview downloads, dozens of instructional video modules, recorded family office conference presentations, and free PDF templates. I have made every effort to ensure that this is not simply a book, but a high-end multimedia training experience for those who have the time and interest to use it as such.

I have been completing research on and working with family offices of different types for almost 10 years now, and I think it is important to share what my perspective has been of family offices so that readers can understand where I am coming from in this book. I study family offices because my entire career and business revolves around the family office industry; it seems the more I share in the form of speaking, recording videos, publishing articles, and so on, the more I am rewarded in unexpected ways for this hard work.
See the video "FOG Overview," at FamilyOfficesGroup.com/Video2

I am motivated to dig as deep as I can into the truth of how this industry operates and invests capital; if I don't know what family offices are looking for, I fail in operating the Family Offices Group association and our Richard Wilson Capital Partners business. If I don't have strong value-first relationships with family offices, I'm out of work. I care very little about collecting $8 book royalties and I care a lot about making this book so valuable that it is a conversation starter between you and me. 
Your friend in the family office space,
 
Richard C. Wilson
Family Offices Group (G.T.C. Institute, LLC) 
Richard Wilson Capital Partners, LLCFamilyOfficesGroup.com P.S. Feel free to reach out to me to ask questions about the book's content or what we do at Richard@FamilyOfficesGroup.com and I will get back to you as soon as possible. 

From the Back Cover:

Praise for The Family Office Book

"Packed with information about what high-net-worth individuals want, need, and get from professional money managers. Richard Wilson pulls back the curtain on the almost mystical world of the super-wealthy. For investors who want to learn what the rich expect from the stewards of their money―and for anyone interested in getting into the family office business. Expert interviews serve up details about what makes the family office an important element of the global investment community―and what the future family office will look like."
―Pimm Fox, Bloomberg TV and radio anchor, Taking Stock with Pimm Fox

"Richard Wilson works with family offices and ultra-wealthy clients on a day-to-day basis. The Family Office Book provides a unique perspective into exactly how those with $20M, $100M, or $1B are using family office wealth management vehicles to manage their capital."
―Russ Alan Prince, President, Prince & Associates, Inc.

"The Family Office Book is unique as the most comprehensive study of the family office world. It provides important perspective to families, family office management, and clients of family offices. A must-read."
―Charles B. Grace Jr., Director, Threshold Group; founder, Ashbridge Investment Management; and grandson of the former president of Bethlehem Steel Company

"Anyone who wants to be in the family office space needs to read this book. It has countless bits of valuable advice. It will be required reading for everyone that joins my family office team."
―Noah B. Rosenfarb, CPA, ABV, PFS , Managing Director, Freedom Wealth Advisors

"The Family Office Book is one of the few books covering the subject matter with a global scope. The real-life interviews with leading family offices from all over the world are amazing and a terrific testament to the superb network Richard has within this taciturn industry. The book is a treasure chest of insight and a one-of-a-kind resource for anybody who is regularly working together with family offices or high-net-worth individuals in general anywhere in the world."
―Michael Hartmann, Esq., LLM, private banking lawyer

About this edition

• Publisher: Wiley
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 1118185366
• ISBN 13: 9781118185360
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336