Steward the assets the principals actually live with

What inventory problem do family offices face?

Ask an investment committee what the equity book is worth and the answer arrives to the decimal. Ask what the principal's watches are worth — or where the yacht's refit invoices are, or whether the art insurance schedule reflects the last decade of market movement — and the answer is usually a shrug toward a spreadsheet last touched at acquisition.

That gap is tolerable until it isn't: an estate event, an insurance claim, a sale forced by circumstance. Advisory closes it before the deadline arrives.

Why treat passion assets as a fifth asset class?

The collection, the aircraft, and the yacht are not ornaments to the balance sheet — they are a fifth asset class, sitting alongside equities, fixed income, real estate, and private holdings. The difference is that the principals actually live with this one, and it rarely receives the discipline the other four take for granted. The office standard is not sentiment; it is the same coordinated mandate the office already applies elsewhere — acquisition, valuation, governance, liquidity, and succession — run as one continuous responsibility rather than a scramble at the moment of sale or estate.

We are to passion assets what a family or investment office is to financial ones. Under a single desk the office receives three capabilities: decision intelligence, evidence and comparables before a position is taken or unwound; lifecycle management, one hand on each asset from acquisition through ownership to eventual monetisation or succession; and owner representation, an independent fiduciary who coordinates the family's dealers, auction houses, insurers, transporters, authenticators, and advisors from the family's side of the table, accountable to the owner alone.

What does the family-office advisory practice cover?

The practice brings a principal's passion assets up to office standard: a verified portfolio inventory and register, a documentation audit of logbooks, provenance files and papers, and written acquisition and authentication policy. The result is an asset class the office can oversee with the same rigour as the rest of the balance sheet.

• Portfolio inventory and review — a verified register of passion assets with realistic values from closed transactions, refreshed on an agreed cadence
• Documentation audit — logbooks, provenance files, papers, receipts, and title gathered, gapped, and where possible reconstructed
• Acquisition and authentication policy — written standards for how the office buys: verification thresholds, documentation requirements, approval gates
• Insurance posture — schedules checked against current values and documented condition across every category
• Succession readiness — disposition plans for collections, aircraft, and vessels: what exists, what it is worth, who would buy it, and in what order it should sell if it must
• Next-generation briefings — heirs who will inherit a collection deserve to understand it before they own it

Advisory or execution? Both exist — separately

This page is the advice practice: flat-fee, question-driven, transaction-agnostic. When the office already knows what it wants bought or sold, the execution partnership runs the mandate — sourcing, verification, negotiation, closing. We keep the two deliberately separate so that the advice is never quietly a pitch.

What the office receives

• Written findings with evidence attached — comparables, gaps, costs, recommendations
• Documents at investment-committee standard, ready for auditors, insurers, and estate counsel
• A named senior contact and agreed response times, under NDA from the first conversation
• No surprises in the economics: flat fees scoped in writing before work begins

Frequently asked questions