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Our Firm

Our firm was founded when lawyers from one of the largest law firms in the world decided to start a boutique legal service to better serve their clients.

The result is a unique offering: a legal practice based in Switzerland that addresses the needs of international wealth owners and the institutions that serve them: banks, trust companies, fiduciaries, external asset managers, insurance companies and family offices.

Our focus is international. We work with global families — those with members or investments in more than one jurisdiction — to create efficient solutions to accomplish the objectives of the family.

Those objectives most often involve planning for the succession of assets, privacy concerns, tax efficiency and asset protection. We appreciate the needs of global families, the most fundamental of which is a multijurisdictional approach to the design and implementation of solutions.

We also advise families on legal issues associated with their particular assets, including advice on real property acquisition and disposition, purchases of unique assets including aircraft and art work, and corporate transactions relating to the purchase, sale and recapitalization of family businesses. We work with a network of lawyers to provide a full global service offering.

We work very closely with institutions and providers serving private clients. They face unique challenges and opportunities as the business of wealth management becomes increasingly transparent. Competition is fierce, and wealth owners expect service providers to offer solutions and expertise tailored to the needs of the family. We help institutional clients design structures and products in view of the regulatory, legal and tax considerations. We also perform risk-analysis, audits and staff training in connection with our advice on compliance issues. We sometimes are called upon to provide consultation on clients’ business strategies.

Our expertise is founded on the tax and trust laws of the United States and United Kingdom. Most of our clients have some connection to one or both of these jurisdictions. We provide comprehensive U.S. income, estate, gift and generation skipping transfer tax planning. We also specialize in advising on U.S. in-bound planning, U.S. out-bound planning, U.S. investments and the use of grantor and non-grantor trusts. Our U.K. practice deals extensively with issues related to U.K. resident but not domiciled individuals, including pre-immigration, inheritance tax planning using offshore assets and vehicles and the use of the remittance basis of taxation. We advise U.K. domiciled individuals on tax-efficient expatriation, succession planning and trust structures. We also handle U.S. and U.K. tax controversies. Non-tax elements of our practice include counseling clients on the establishment of succession vehicles, family offices and private trust companies.