CAPITAL ADVISORY: FAMILY OFFICES
A family office runs on the same discipline as a company.
We work with single and multi-family offices on the work an office buys from outside: buy-side mandates on direct deals, capital for the operating companies it already holds, and introductions to offices abroad investing in the same places. Each engagement is scoped to the office, not to a product set.
THE PREMISE
A household with capital is an operating entity.
A family builds, manages, and preserves wealth over a long horizon, and the mechanics look like a business: budgeting, cash flow, and planning that someone owns. The requirement is a trusted adviser who holds the plan and has the standing to say no to a deal.
We work as that adviser on the activity that reaches outside the office. Where the family owns operating companies, that includes financing them and, when the time comes, selling them.
Where a family is planning across generations, we work to what the family has decided its capital is for. The office already has managers and does not need another one, so the engagement is built around the family's own interests and the assets it already holds.
WHAT WE DO
Four kinds of work, scoped to the office.
Buy-side mandates on direct deals
Origination, diligence, and execution when the office is buying a company directly rather than through a fund. A direct deal puts a family in competition with sponsors who do this full time, and closing that gap is the work.
Capital for the operating companies
Debt and equity raised for the businesses the family already holds, structured so control stays where the family wants it and the reporting obligation is one the company can meet.
Introductions between offices
For over a decade our team has partnered with family offices around the world. We introduce offices to each other on shared sectors, interests, and expertise, which is how a family gets exposure to foreign and emerging markets through someone already operating in them.
Sell-side, when it is time
Exit readiness and process management for a family-owned business, run at a pace the family sets, not on a banker's calendar.
WHERE THIS CONNECTS
The rest of the firm, when the office needs it.
Two parts of the practice carry most of the work behind a family office mandate: origination on the network of funds and sponsors, and capital raising for the companies the family holds.
HONEST ANSWERS
What offices ask on the first call.
- What does an engagement cover?
- Transactions and the work around them: buying a company, financing one, selling one, and introductions to offices and investors operating where the family wants exposure. Portfolio management, tax, and estate work stay with the advisers the family already has, and we work alongside them.
- We already have a family office team. Where does this fit?
- Alongside it, on the deals the team cannot source or does not have the bandwidth to run. An internal team knows the family's mandate better than we ever will. What it usually cannot do is reach thirty owners in a subsector inside a quarter.
- What size of office do you work with?
- Single and multi-family offices investing directly at lower middle-market and middle-market size. The screen is the same one on the capital raising page: EBITDA between $500K and $25M for a platform acquisition, and Series B through D for growth capital.
- How is this priced?
- It depends on the mandate and it is agreed in writing before work starts. We do not publish fees on this website, because the terms belong in the engagement letter rather than in marketing copy.
Start a conversation
Tell us what the office is trying to do.
A direct acquisition the office is working on, financing for a company the family holds, or exposure to a market where the office has no people. We will tell you whether it is work we can run and what the first month looks like.
Bass Zanjani, who leads the capital advisory practice, reads every brief. If the mandate is not one we can run well, we will say so rather than take it.