Asian Clients Using BVI Vista Structures To Tailor Benefits To Children

In an article first published by Citywealth, Ogier Marcus Leese says that UHNW Chinese and Southeast Asian families are taking business transfer issues more seriously as the stakes are higher and recent high-profile dispute cases have rung alarm bells.

What cases of succession planning involving business transfer have you been dealing with?

We've had several recent cases involving our Southeast Asian clients where the principal concern has been to preserve the unified ownership of the family business through successive generations. In each case, we've addressed this by separating out ownership of the underlying family business from the rights to the income arising from that business. In one case, the shares in the family company were held in a BVI VISTA trust structure, which disengages the traditional duty of a trustee to monitor and intervene in the running of an underlying company. In our case, the patriarch and one of his children were appointed directors of