Dubai: Succession planning issues arise: dividing family empires between thirty and forty children
With eleven billionaires amongst a population of only two million people, Dubai has one of the highest concentrations of the super- rich, according to data provider WealthInsight. However, Alastair Glover, a principal associate focused on advising private clients in the Dubai office of law firm Wragge Lawrence Graham & Co, says: “The market in Dubai is, perhaps, more polarised than other more mature financial centres. At one end of the spectrum, there are the ultra-high net worth individuals based in the region, whose wealth commonly stems from the family business empire. On the other, there are the expatriates, typically from the UK, US and other European countries, as well as a very substantial and successful non-resident Indian community. These expats are more often in the $5m-20m bracket, with the larger families with wealth well in excess of $100m.”
He says that this gap will close as Dubai continues to mature, and the demand for succession planning will increase as a result. A third stream of work comes from on-resident high net worth individuals increasingly choosing Dubai as a wealth management centre, thanks to the success of the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC). The attraction is the English common law system, a tax-friendly regime and its own regulatory system aimed at attracting financial institutions to the Emirate.
Gautam Duggal, head of wealth management for the region at Standard Chartered Bank, says: “Besides catering to the needs of resident clients, …To read the full article, please subscribe to our e-magazine.