Family Offices
The modern family office is a commercial and sophisticated investment vehicle with commensurately broad and sophisticated legal needs. The development of family offices as, essentially, privately held versions of investment fund structures has special implications for the principals and families they serve. Grounded in our world-class, deep, powerful, and coordinated platform, K&L Gates is optimized to serve the total legal needs of today’s family offices.
We provide single- and multi-family office clients with legal advice on family office entity structuring and implementation, investment transactions, tax, philanthropy, regulatory, and other areas. Working closely and in cooperation with principals and other family office service providers, we establish efficient investment and operational structures, and add value across all types of investment and philanthropic transactions. Our global platform allows us to marshal the resources of K&L Gates for clients and coordinate appropriate referral networks, if needed.
We serve as primary outside securities, deal, and transactional counsel to some of the most sophisticated family investment offices and private foundations in the world. As a result, we understand the unique and complex set of issues often faced by such entities. Our clients include a range of family office and family wealth management platforms, including founders of multi-national public companies, generations of family-held businesses, venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, and fund managers, and their trust and estate planning vehicles and philanthropic entities, including private foundations.
Our family office team advises clients in the following areas, among others:
- Family Office and Investment Structuring, including regulatory, compliance, tax.
- Complex Transactions, including fund formation and investments, direct and venture capital investments, co-investments, and real estate.
- Income Tax and Planning.
- Estate Planning and Wealth Transfer.
- Philanthropic Giving and Structuring.
- Specialty Areas such as Executive Compensation, Sports, Fine Arts, and Immigration.
Value-Added Industry Leadership
Our team brings the value of our industry knowledge and best practices to help generate opportunities for growing and established single family and multi-family offices. As thought leaders, we create programs that encourage knowledge sharing across the network of participants active in the family office landscape. From asset managers, to wealth advisors and other service providers, our lawyers forge family office connections, share ideas, and bring new perspectives on issues of industry importance. We create pathways to new opportunities through introductions to new joint venture partners, financing sources, and investments.
Globally Poised
We provide personalized legal services to clients around the world. Lawyers across our global platform regularly advise international families with significant and complicated assets whose members, interests, and assets span the globe. With offices in key capital cities across five continents, we can meet the needs of our family office clients wherever they happen to live, work, or own assets. Through our firm’s platform, we can holistically and seamlessly advise on inbound and outbound transactions that require strong international tax and transactional experience.
Thought Leadership
On 30 January 2024, the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) published a final rule (Final Rule) increasing the premium processing fee from US$2,500 to US$2,805, increasing filing fees for I-129 and I-140 employment-based petitions, and imposing a new Asylum Program Fee for each Form I-129 and I-140 filed by employers.
On 3 April 2024, the US Securities and Exchange Commission announced the first settlement with a stand-alone registered investment adviser for, among other things, failures to maintain and preserve certain electronic communications.
On 22 December 2020, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) adopted amendments (the final rule) to Rule 206(4)-1 under the Investment Advisers Act of 1940 (the Advisers Act) to modernize the regulation of investment adviser advertising and solicitation practices.
On 7 March 2024, the Illinois Pollution Control Board proposed amendments to its Ground Water Quality regulations, which would set standards for selected per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances compounds at or near their levels of detection and would result in some of the most stringent standards in the country.