Roux, Laurent
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(Article) Personne de confiance
01.06.2018
Laurent Roux, an international adviser to families and family offices, shares an in-depth examination of the essential role of a personne de confiance, defines the functions and criteria which depict a ?most trusted adviser' to families, including the interaction with a family office and its members. A member of the Pictet Swiss private banking family, he highlights the historical foundation of the personne de confiance, the practical aspects of serving families of wealth, and the challenges of both culture and collaboration. -
(Article) Using a VFO with a PTC as an alternative to family offices
01.09.2021
An innovative structure being considered primarily in the United States, but applicable elsewhere, is considered in an article by Laurent Roux, who proposes combining a virtual family office (VFO) with a private trust company (PTC). He argues that this combination allows wealthy families to "marry family wealth management, and family office services with multigenerational trust and estate planning". The VFO usually refers to an office with a limited number of personnel with most of the services outsourced, which is said to give access to otherwise expensive outside experts with a smaller cost of actual infrastructure. The private trust company is designed to allow the family to control the nature and identity of the trustee for family trusts. These have become popular in Asia according to Laurent. He includes overviews, with very helpful charts, of the comparison of strengths and weaknesses of single-family offices with multi-family offices. He adds charts comparing the VFO. Finally, he adds charts detailing the features of a PTC. He ends with "The PTC works well as a VFO with the proper construction and process, and dedicated administrator - as is the case with both SFOs and MFOs. The difference is efficiency relative to needs. There is indeed much to consider."