Marco Siero, Senior Strategist for Northern Trust's Global Family & Private Investment Offices Group in Luxembourg, says that by his firm choosing to establish an office in the Duchy, Northern Trust will be able to reveal Luxembourg’s unrecognized advantages of reputation and structure to those seeking a home for their family offices.
Can you describe Northern Trust’s activities and what has attracted you to Luxembourg?
Northern Trust Global Family & Private Investment Office Group is part of Northern Trust, a financial institution with 22,000 employees in 51 locations across 23 countries. Its business lines include asset servicing, asset management and wealth management. The Family Office Group forms part of Northern Trust’s Wealth Management organization and has 265 professionals servicing more than 500 family office clients globally. We have seen increased interest from family offices in transferring their assets away from offshore jurisdictions to locations like Luxembourg offering a higher degree of reputation and structure. Luxembourg provides the right balance between supervision and flexibility. Its experience servicing investment funds and other investment vehicles makes it increasingly attractive to wealthy families.
“We have seen increased interest from family offices in transferring their assets away from offshore jurisdictions to locations like Luxembourg offering a higher degree of reputation and structure”
You have just joined the Luxembourg Association of Family Offices. What are your motivations and what do you think you can offer to the LAFO ecosystem?
As a member of LAFO, I will be able to support efforts to promote Luxembourg as a location of choice for family offices from across the globe. Indeed, we believe that some of our clients would be interested in either joining LAFO as a member or supporting LAFO’s efforts to promote Luxembourg advantages. Family offices have decided to move their assets to take advantage of Luxembourg’s investment ecosystem that gives them the ability to structure specific investment solutions through dedicated fund structures or the Luxembourg private wealth management company, the SPF (société de gestion de patrimoine familial).
What are the main challenges to seizing the opportunities Luxembourg offers?
Luxembourg is in heavy competition with other places as a center for family offices to invest given the growing attraction of locations with reputations for well-structured and regulated environments. Families have other options including Monaco, Switzerland, UK and Guernsey to name just a few. However, Luxembourg has an attractive toolkit: It offers a multi-lingual and experienced pool of talent, structures such as the SPF and many other benefits for family offices. What Luxembourg doesn’t currently have is wide recognition of all of its attractiveness to family offices. Therefore, the promotion of Luxembourg through multiple channels is key to success.