Wealth and
tax planning.

By wealth and tax planning I mean the architecture everything else rests on: who owns what, through which vehicle, under which tax treatment. In many substantial estates that architecture was never actually designed: ownership arranged by accident, companies kept alive out of inertia, taxes paid without anyone checking whether the law offered a better route. Trusts and holding companies are not the starting point: they are possible answers, and they only make sense once the question has been asked properly.

I work by testing, not by catalogue. I start from a map of what already exists — ownership, shareholdings, property, assets held abroad — and measure the tax burden and the points of exposure of every position. Then I put the alternatives to the test: a family holding company, a trust, or simply a reordering of ownership. Every structure brings entry costs, annual obligations and constraints that last for years: it enters the design only if it solves a real problem — protection, governance, succession, efficiency — and if the measured benefit outweighs its weight. The same discipline applies internationally: changes of residence and preferential regimes are assessed before any move, with the numbers in hand, and always in full transparency towards the tax authorities.

The overall design, and how well it holds over time, is my responsibility. The deeds are not: trust instruments, articles, tax opinions and filings are reserved work, signed by lawyers, notaries and accountants — from the practice's network or of your own choosing — each within their own remit. When the structure touches the other dimensions of your wealth — investments, property, protection, succession — I involve the professionals of the network and the reading widens to the direction of the Family Office: every vehicle has to serve the whole, not itself. And one criterion is not up for negotiation: whatever cannot be declared in broad daylight does not enter the design.