The failures that destroy family wealth are usually human. A founder dies without saying who decides. Two siblings hold equal shares and opposite views about selling the company. A divorce puts a shareholding into the hands of somebody the family did not choose. Nothing in the portfolio caused any of that, and no allocation repairs it.
Governance
Putting the Rules in Place Early
Charters, assemblies, decision rights and oversight reporting, written while everyone is on speaking terms.
Why Governance Decides What Survives
Governance is the set of rules a family writes while everyone is on speaking terms, so they exist on the day they are needed. Documents work only where a family uses them habitually, which is why we build the meeting calendar alongside the charter.
What We Do
01
Family Constitution and Charter
What a family has agreed about ownership goes into the charter: who may hold shares, what happens when somebody wants to sell, how a holding is valued, and the conduct expected of anyone carrying the name into business. We facilitate the drafting across several sessions and write the text, though the family decides every clause.
02
Family Assembly and Council Design
An assembly brings the wider family together annually to hear how the capital has performed and which decisions are coming. A smaller council meets quarterly, carrying delegated authority within limits the assembly has set. We design the membership rules, the rotation, the quorum and the agenda template, then attend as secretary until the family is comfortable running the meetings without us.
03
Decision Rights and Conflict Process
Ambiguity about authority turns a disagreement into a rupture. We produce a schedule stating which decisions rest with an individual, which require the council, which need a supermajority, and which demand unanimity, with every threshold expressed in figures. A conflict process sits beside it: a named internal mediator, a defined period for resolution, a record of the positions taken and recourse to an external chair appointed in advance.
04
Reporting and Oversight Architecture
When the people responsible receive information they cannot interrogate, oversight fails. Council members get a quarterly pack in a fixed format: consolidated position, performance against policy, breaches and their resolution, fees paid to every party, and the decisions requested at the meeting. Each year an independent review is commissioned by an appointed committee, and the findings reach the assembly unedited.
Our Own Governance
We hold ourselves to the arrangement described above. Ownership rests with the people working here. Assets sit with custodians the client appoints, and we hold a power of instruction alone, meaning we act on your behalf while remaining unable to move money to ourselves. The conflicts policy is published here and reviewed each year. Fees are quoted in one document, and the annual statement shows every amount received from any source connected to your account.
Charters written during a crisis rarely hold.
If your family has grown past the point where one person decides everything, the work is worth starting now, in a year when nothing is urgent.