Our Clients

Profile 1: Family Security for Years to Come

Marianne is a 64 year old divorcee who owns her own real estate development company in a major metropolitan area. She has two adult children and five grandchildren. When Marianne came to us, she had several goals. First, she needed to invest for her own retirement. Also, she wanted to help ensure the financial future of her children and grandchildren. Finally, she wanted to someday disseminate her assets to her heirs in the most tax-efficient manner. To help ensure that Marianne is successful in achieving her goals, we constructed an investment portfolio with the right balance of risk and reward to preserve principal and generate income while limiting potential tax liability. We then designed and implemented a sophisticated estate planning strategy using a series of trusts and a family LLC for her children and grandchildren. By taking a long-term, multi-generational approach to her plan, we are able to help Marianne enjoy her wealth today and pass it along to her family in the years to come.

Profile 2: Preserving a Family Legacy

William spent the better part of his 70 plus years building his company into a regional powerhouse. During his working years, he invested in a variety of asset classes and was, for the most part, successful. William recently completed the sale of his company which created the potential for a sizable tax liability. Finally, William has a strong desire to give back to the community by donating generously to charitable and other non-profit groups in the area. When he became a client, we helped him consolidate his investment management goals, tax planning needs and philanthropic desires into a single, coherent strategy for achieving all three. Most importantly, we were able to bring our tax expertise to bear by advising William, over his initial objections, to liquidate all his investment positions with realized losses. Not only did this eliminate securities from his portfolio that were unlikely to recover, but we later used many of those captured losses to secure capital gains he earned in the portfolio we designed. In addition, we were able to apply the remaining losses against the income from the sale of his company, rendering that transaction virtually tax free. As so often happens within our client universe, William relied on us to help his family during a time of crisis. When a close relative of his passed, he recommended the widow come see us to help settle her estate, organize her finances and create an investment plan to see her through retirement. Some of William’s children are also clients. By providing William with a center of stability for overseeing his family’s assets, we help ensure he and his family can enjoy their wealth now while preserving his legacy for future generations.

Profile 3: A Local View with a Global Perspective

Glynnis is a 65 year old widow who was left considerable assets by her late husband and stands to inherit a substantial estate from her mother in the not to distant future. When we first met Glynnis, she, like many single women her age, was primarily concerned with preserving, growing and, more importantly, not outliving her assets. She was also concerned about her current trust document in which the corporate trustee also acted as the asset manager. To help Glynnis realize her financial goals, we constructed a portfolio that generates a monthly income while minimizing risk to her principal. To resolve her trust issue, we established a new trust document which specified that our custodian will provide administrative trust services while retaining our firm as manager of the trust’s assets. The arrangement avoids any potential conflict by separating investment management from the corporate administrative trustee. Glynnis’s daughter, Tina, and her husband came to us—at the urging of her mother—after realizing they needed to start saving for retirement. We established Roth IRAs for both and planned for regular contributions to their U.S.-based employee-sponsored plans. Their situation, however, is not as simple as it seems. Tina and her husband own income-producing real estate overseas and he has a retirement plan from a former employer in the same country (they both live in the U.S. now). With our global perspective, we were able to create a domestic-based wealth plan that took these factors into account.

Profile 4: Seeing the Big Picture

Keith is a 46-year old married father of two who owns his own internet services company. Keith’s primary concerns are growing his business, providing for his kids’ academic future and establishing a retirement plan for him and his wife. Helping our clients manage their family business is one of our primary areas of expertise and we advise Keith on topics such as corporate structure, capital management, taxation and succession planning. To help Keith meet his other wealth planning goals, we developed a single investment strategy designed to make sure funds are available for educating his children and/or enjoying his retirement when they are needed. And, because we addressed Keith’s entire wealth picture from a family-centric perspective, it’s our expectation that his children will one day become clients in their own right.