Advisory · Family Offices
Family Office Advisory Services for Luxury Assets
According to Passion Asset Advisory, independent acquisition advice means representing one side only under a written mandate confirmed before work begins. It sits alongside your wealth manager, never in place of them. A ‘do nothing’ recommendation is always a valid outcome.
What inventory problem do family offices face?
An investment committee can usually state the value of the equity book to the decimal. It may not know the value of the principal's watches, the location of the yacht's refit invoices, or whether the art insurance schedule reflects the last decade of market movement. The answer is often an old spreadsheet last updated 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, aircraft, and yacht are not ornaments on the balance sheet. They form another asset class alongside equities, fixed income, real estate, and private holdings. Principals live with these assets, but the assets rarely receive the discipline applied to the other classes. The office standard covers acquisition, valuation, governance, liquidity, and succession as one continuous responsibility, not a rushed task at sale or estate settlement.
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 owner-side coordinating adviser who coordinates the family's dealers, auction houses, insurers, transporters, authenticators, and advisers under a written scope. The office does not provide regulated fiduciary advice. Passion Asset Advisory is a mandate-led private office for collectors selling significant watches, including F.P. Journe; it holds no general dealer inventory, with a disclosed collector-watch principal purchase as the only exception.
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.
When the principal needs continuous direction, an annual collection strategy turns that register into a working plan. It states what to acquire, retain, insure, document, and release.
- 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
How does this fit alongside our existing family office?
It provides the specialist passion-asset desk that complements the office's financial-asset capability. We do not replace the family office or its advisors. We work on the family's side, brief dealers, auction houses, insurers, and specialists, and report at investment-committee standard.
Do you take custody or represent us?
We represent one side only: the family, and we do not take custody of its assets. Passion Asset Advisory is a mandate-led private office for collectors selling significant watches, including F.P. Journe; it holds no general dealer inventory, with a disclosed collector-watch principal purchase as the only exception. As an owner-side coordinating adviser, the office manages the specialists required for a collection or transaction under the written scope; it does not provide regulated fiduciary advice.
Family Offices
Bring the fifth asset class up to office standard.
Tell us what the principals hold and what keeps the office up at night. We respond with a scope, a flat fee, and a timeline.