LGA sees worldwide perspective as a vital ingredient to wealth management. St. Louis, Mo.-based advisory Lowenhaupt Global Advisors (LGA) has established a nine-member "Global Council" to help it serve ultra-high-net-worth families with "complex and multinational" needs.

"The Global Council will support Lowenhaupt Global Advisors' customized approach to helping families manage all aspects of their wealth," says Charles Lowenhaupt, chairman and CEO of LGA. "[It] will also help families worldwide address the challenges they face today: succession within the family group and of their trusted advisors, multi-currency investing, measuring performance, cross-national ownership, relevant governance structures and [accessing] un-conflicted advice."

Lowenhaupt, who is also managing member of the St. Louis-based law firm Lowenhaupt & Chasnoff, writes the Families first column in this publication.

Outside views

To support its outreach to international families, LGA will open its first office outside the U.S. by the end of June this year -- but for now it's not saying where this non-U.S. office will be located.

"These initiatives are part of a strategic plan to build Lowenhaupt Global Advisors' capacity to work with multi-jurisdictional families living and working outside the U.S.," says Lowenhaupt.

In Lowenhaupt's view, many predominantly U.S. families are global in the sense that they invest and travel overseas and that family, frequently enough, individual family members choose to live and work abroad.

"Best practices in family wealth-management practices are global, and even philanthropy is global," says Lowenhaupt. "I don't believe we can work for U.S. families without a global perspective -- [the U.S. isn't] an island in the world economy or in families' lives."

Lowenhaupt and three of his LGA colleagues -- COO Mark Brown, CFO Joseph Rechter and senior advisor Heidi Steiger -- are on LGA's Global Council along with

Sydney-based Stuart Black, a senior partner of Chapman Eastway, an Australian accounting firm that has been providing tax and investment advice to wealthy families for over a century
New Delhi-based Pradeep Dinodia, senior partner of S.R. Dinodia & Company, a family owned tax-accounting and advisory firm that provides corporate finance, legal and tax consulting to wealthy families in India
London-based Michael Hutchinson, an advisor to ultra-high-net-worth families and former head of the Guinness family office
Kuala Lumpur-based Bashir Sharif of the Palladium Group, a family-business consulting firm
Geneva-based Lee Thistlethwaite, an independent advisor to wealthy families and a former managing director of JPMorgan Private Bank

"Working with international families is extremely complex; not only from a legal perspective, but in terms of customs and cultures," says Lowenhaupt. The role of the council's non-LGA members, he adds, "is to help us work with global and U.S. families."

They're not meant to funnel referrals LGA's way or to work directly with LGA's clients -- and if need arises for their individual services -- say, in identifying resources to help LGA serve its clients in a given jurisdiction -- LGA might call on one or more of them, "but that wouldn't be in their capacity as council members," says Lowenhaupt.

Ahead of the curve

Equally, council members "may end up as potential partners or potential employees because we know them and think highly of them," says Lowenhaupt -- but again, building those sorts of relationships isn't a primary purpose of LGA's Global Council.

Council members on LGA's payroll will share their views on international wealth-management from the perspectives of their individual areas of expertise. For example, Brown will provide insights on support technologies for trans-national families. Rechter brings his experience in international investing and investment banking to bear, and Steiger, a former head of Neuberger Berman's private-asset management group, is a consummate "resourcer" with a strong background in international wealth management, according to Lowenhaupt.

LGA's attempt to improve its understanding of global wealth management coincides with Lowenhaupt's assumption of the title "president" of LGA. In fact, Lowenhaupt says the non-U.S. council members suggested the change to Lowenhaupt as his "first lesson in non-U.S. culture: overseas, the president is the guy who runs the shop."

Previously Steiger had held the title president. Fortunately, "she doesn't care about titles, and neither do I, so it was a very simple transition," says Lowenhaupt.

LGA's Global Council will meet twice a year. Its first formal get-together will be in July 2008, possibly in St. Louis.

In 1908, Lowenhaupt's grandfather Abraham Lowenhaupt founded Lowenhaupt & Chasnoff as the first income-tax law practice in the U.S. -- five years before Congress and the states authorized an income tax, and six or seven years before the government got around to collecting it. Over the decades Lowenhaupt & Chasnoff's focus on taxes has made it a primary advisor to wealthy individuals and families in the U.S. and abroad.

In 2006, Lowenhaupt founded LGA, an RIA, to handle Lowenhaupt & Chasnoff's philanthropic-counseling, family-guidance, investment-advisory and family-business consulting activities while ensuring attorney-client exclusivity around matters such as taxation, estate planning and probate. -FWR

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