We use our experience to provide excellent private and commercial trust solutions for our clients.
Our extensive trust practice advises on a full range of private and commercial trusts, family offices, and foundations in Guernsey. Our speciality is providing advice on the establishment and all other aspects of complex asset-holding and wealth management structures utilising trusts, foundations and private trust companies. We are a market leader in advising on the establishment and running of family office structures, including designing bespoke structures and advising on governance and regulatory issues.
Our team has a wealth of experience in the private trust sector. Our expertise is enhanced by having both in-house and private practice experience, enabling the team to have a substantially deeper understanding of our clients and their businesses. Additionally each member of the team, whilst predominantly acting on private trust matters, have individual specialisms including foundations and family offices.
The independence and structure of our practice promotes a thorough and deep understanding of our clients and their businesses. We provide a fully integrated service to meet the needs of our clients and our unified team works closely with specialist lawyers throughout the Firm, in particular our corporate, dispute resolution, employment and property teams.
- Establishing private, commercial, charitable and purpose trusts
- Preparing administrative documentation
- Establishing Private Trust Companies
- Migrating and terminating trusts
- Advising on administrative issues e.g. rights of beneficiaries to information
- Advising on regulatory issues
- Contentious and non-contentious applications
- Establishing Guernsey foundations and advising in connection with all aspects of their on-going administration
- Migration of foundations into Guernsey from other jurisdictions
- Establishing Private Family Offices
- Reviewing and restructuring of Family Offices and advising on effective governance structures
- Family constitutions
- Advising a global institution on restructuring of a Guernsey asset-holding structure (value in excess of $20bn) to provide diversification of risks and flexibility.
- Establishing a single family office in Guernsey for an international family (net worth £3bn) to manage the family’s global wealth.
- Establishing a Guernsey Private Trust Company structure and a series of trusts to undertake generational planning for the children of the settlor.
- Restructuring a Guernsey single family office (net worth £350m) to improve governance structure and achieve a segregation of assets.
- Advising on re-structuring of trust and underlying corporate structure to release USD 500m to principal beneficiaries.
- Acting for a Guernsey corporate trustee in relation to the migration into Guernsey of a Liechtenstein and a Panamanian foundation including advising on and assistance with preparation of documentation to be submitted to the Guernsey Registry.
- Acting for a Guernsey trustee, drafting documentation to create a hybrid trust.
- As part of a trustee’s liability management exercise, drafting a suite of fresh documentation to address issues created by historic trust documentation which had been replicated over multiple trust structures.
- Advising a leading US investment bank on the creation of multiple foundation and trust structures in Guernsey involving the migration of six multi-billion dollar securitisation structures.
- Advising on the creation of a bespoke family office structure using foundations to run underlying trusts, foundations and companies, including advice on the regulatory and licencing requirements of the GFSC.
- Appearing before the Royal Court acting for the minor and unborn beneficiaries of a complex fixed interest trust in an application to vary the terms of the trust so as to delay vesting of the trust fund and extend the life of the trust.
