FAMILY OFFICE
Meeting an Expanding Need Arjun Mittal Founder and CIO, Abbey Road Investments Group provides insight into the role, the benefits of and the reasons for the expansion and development of family office services in the region at this time
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hat are the leading drivers of the growth of Family Office in the Middle East?
We would highlight three leading drivers. 1, Inter-generational transfer of wealth. It is estimated that between $1-2 trillion will be transferred to the next generation over the coming 10 years across the Middle East. This transfer of wealth often needs to be organised in a formal manner to ensure all stakeholders buy into the process. 2, Families are increasingly becoming global in their investment outlook, and are keen to take advantage of different opportunities, including alternative investments which often requires working with specialists who prefer dealing with corporate structures like a Family Office. 3, There is an increasing acceptance amongst families that it is important to have a formal team to help take care of the myriad issues involved with wealth (investments, wealth structuring, succession, tax, legal etc.). The Family Office is proving to be an excellent vehicle to handle all this complexity.
2. What do you define as the top-most benefit of the services provided by a family office?
Arjun Mittal, Founder and CIO, Abbey Road Investments Group
22
Banking and Finance news in the MEA market
Every family has its own unique set of circumstances, and thus they have different requirements from a Family Office. Abbey Road is a Multi-Family Office (MFO) and so appeals to families that either are not ready to go it alone or don’t have the desire to bear the costs of staffing a quality Single-Family Office (SFO). From our perspective, we tend to see two key benefits that families look for from their MFO (which we believe also applies equally to a SFO): 1. Portfolio construction and risk management advice is probably the most common theme we come across, and is an area that Abbey Road specialises in. We spend quality time with the families to assess their personal balance sheets and to understand their overall investment objectives. This then leads to the use of investment strategies across
