Finding appropriate candidates, generally a delicate matter even for more conventional family offices, is a difficult task. “There’s no clear career ladder for these roles,” says Kelin Gersick of Lansberg Gersick in New Haven, Conn., a family business consultant and one of the authors of the book Generation to Generation. “You have to cast your net broadly.”
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Unconventional family office executives are called upon to craft plans that go far beyond asset management and wealth preservation. This breed of manager handles tasks as diverse as administering philanthropic projects and creating family education initiatives. But finding, managing and paying for these multifaceted family offices can prove prohibitively difficult. |
For Susan Remmer Ryzewic and her family, the answer to this conundrum was to join a multifamily office that emphasized helping relatives deal with family dynamics. About 15 years ago, her family sold the future rights to projects produced by the business her father started in 1958, while retaining its assets; the firm originally built factories that manufactured synthetic fabrics. The deal made the family wealthy enough to consider setting up its own family office.
But while Remmer Ryzewic, her two sisters and her brother were all adults, they had never worked together. Consequently, during frequent meetings to discuss what to do with their new wealth, they were unable to reach a consensus, or even listen to each other. “We’d been a family that had vacationed together, but had never had to make business decisions together,” says Remmer Ryzewic, who now lives in northeastern Florida. “We each had our agendas, and just kept trying to convince each other to accept our own positions.” The siblings, along with their mother, quickly realized they were getting nowhere, and they needed help.
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