Hugo King-Oakley, head of private markets and community for GPFO (Global Partnership Family Offices), discusses what he hears from GPFO’s members about choosing a home base for the family office:
How do family offices decide where to locate?
There’s quite a lot of complexity and nuance to these decisions. With our members, we are working to engage a deeper discussion around not just reactive moving but a proper best practice search.
There are a lot of factors at play. It’s both lifestyle, but also operational and jurisdictional issues, and regulatory and tax and structuring, and all the factors that come into this. There’s both the family office side, but also the personal living side.
Jurisdictional issues come up when there’s geopolitical, political or tax change. And recently there have been a lot of geopolitical changes, a lot of political changes and some tax changes.
What are some of the issues that come up with specific markets?
One of the very mature markets for us is the U.K. and Europe. In the U.K. context, there’s been a Labour government. This leads to expectations around tax changes — specifically around issues like inheritance tax.
In terms of recent jurisdictional marketing, Singapore, Hong Kong and the UAE, specifically, have been marketing themselves very heavily as jurisdictions for family offices.
