Private wealth

Private clients need tax advice to navigate an ever more complicated world

While the importance of having well-structured assets and succession plans remains for private clients, the past decade has seen a change in what is acceptable from a tax planning perspective and an increased focus on global transparency. Clients need to consider the perception of what they do as much as the legal effectiveness.

For some families, this is compounded by having to consider overseas tax and legal regimes, possibly because a family member has settled elsewhere or the family has acquired non-UK assets,  Similarly, this can happen in reverse with historically non-UK families either having family members come to live here or acquiring UK assets.  The range of investment opportunities available to families has also grown, as well as the vehicles for holding those investments.

Osborne Clarke's Private Wealth team has the skills and experience to guide clients through these complexities. The team covers all the areas that you might expect from private client lawyers, such as wills, lasting powers of attorney, trusts and investment companies. However, working with colleagues in Osborne Clarke's wider teams, the Private Wealth team can also help you form private investment funds, find the optimal structure for a new business venture or investment and support family office arrangements.

The Private Wealth team also understands the wider issues that clients might face. For international clients, this can include succession laws or conflicting legal regimes. For business owners, the issues might be providing liquidity on death or how to structure succession whilst keeping those involved in the management properly incentivised. For many families, these business and international issues overlap. Osborne Clarke's trust and estate dispute experts can also help when things go wrong or there are disagreements about the division of estates or operations of trusts.

In addition to our strong UK and wider European client base, Osborne Clarke's Private Wealth team act for clients from the Middle East,  Far East, Europe and Africa. The team is also recognised for its work for families with a US connection, whether that be through family members being US taxpayers or because they have interests in US businesses or trusts. The team has extensive experience advising family offices with both a domestic and an international aspect to the structuring of their affairs.

"The past decade has seen a change in what is acceptable from a tax planning perspective and an increased focus on global transparency"