A question for wealthy folks with homes, businesses, and family members all over the world is where to park their assets.
3 min
Ultra-rich families have often run their wealth from a single-family office located where their business exists, or their money was made, and where most members of their family live. But the dynamics for many of these families has radically changed as their businesses, homes, and children spread across the world, according to a report from Citi Private Bank.
Dealing with multiple jurisdictions creates possibilities but also complexities and raises a question for families of where the bulk of their assets should reside, as the bank details in the report, titled Asset Location and Global Mobility. Citi, through its global family office group, works with 1,800 family offices with an average net worth of US$2 billion, says Hannes Hofmann, head of the group.
“A lot more families are now saying, ‘how do you professionalize the decision where these assets are sitting?’” Hofmann says.
Citi’s family office clients are very global. In a survey published last week, 71% of the bank’s clients reported that they were international in some way. Of that group, 53% said they have assets in multiple countries; 44% cited having family members in several countries; and 19% said they have family who are considering a move to another country or changing their citizenship.
Potential changes to tax regulations affecting the wealthy resulting from elections in the U.K. and France in Europe, and several countries in Latin America, could spark further globalisation of the world’s wealthiest families, the survey said.
In selecting a location for a family office, Citi recommends considering four criteria: the stability of the country’s financial, economic, and political systems; its financial and legal infrastructure; access to talent and cost considerations; and convenience, “including where family members live, work, and play,” the report said.
“We’re telling everyone: As you think about your asset strategy, you want safety that there’s a rule of law and there’s also a financial system that will protect your assets if things go wrong,” Hofmann says. “We might assume this is something that you get everywhere in the world, but the truth is you don’t.”
Strong financial and legal infrastructure also ensures families can find informed advisors and that regulations are secure, supporting, for instance, the movement of assets across jurisdictions.
The purpose of Citi’s report is to show how the four criteria are interlinked, Hofmann says. It may make sense to place a family office in a major wealth centre such as the U.S., Switzerland, or Singapore, but assets can also be kept in jurisdictions such as Jersey in the Channel Islands, or Luxembourg, Monaco, and Dubai.
The report details key factors in each of these places. Monaco, for instance, is less than a square mile in size but “has for centuries attracted the wealthiest families in the world given its favorable tax system, robust, if limited economy, safety, advanced medical facilities, and agreeable Mediterranean climate,” Citi said.
The Bahamas, meanwhile, is a politically and economically stable country just off of Florida’s east coast, making it convenient to the U.S., Canada, and Central and South America.
The U.S., meanwhile, accounts for 32% of global liquid investable wealth, and attracts ultra wealthy individuals with its “almost unrivalled breadth of education, lifestyle, business, innovation, and investing opportunities.”
“People need to think about these places and where they want to have their assets, where they want to base their residency, and then of course, what potentially their exit strategies and contingency plans are,” Hofmann says. The latter is important for a world facing rising instability and conflict.
For those who don’t have a plan in place yet, the report offers several locations where golden visas and residency programs offer a path to a backup location, such as Spain, Malta, St. Kitts and Nevis, and New Zealand. Most of these are countries where the wealthy already have connections through education or business interests, the report said.
Some of these jurisdictions don’t have tax regimes or their tax regulations don’t apply for short stays. As a result, people are choosing to become “tax nomads”—dividing their time between countries so they don’t spend long enough in one place to be taxed.
“There are some very wealthy people [who] we work with and some very wealthy families who’ve taken this global location topic to an art form,” Hofmann says.
“A lot of people want to be in L.A. or Miami or New York and London, so you can spend a third of the year in the U.K. and the U.S. and then the remainder of the year you spend in other places and you’re not a tax resident anywhere for tax purposes,” he says.
This strategy is “completely legal,” Hofmann adds. “This is not tax avoidance, it’s just tax management.”
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Rugged coastal drives and fireside drams define a slow, indulgent journey through Scotland’s far north.
A haven for hedge-fund titans and Hollywood grandees, Greenwich is one of the world’s most expensive residential enclaves, where eye-watering prices meet unapologetic grandeur.
The lunar flyby would be the deepest humans have traveled in space in decades.
4 min
It’s go time for the highest-stakes mission at NASA in more than 50 years.
On April 1, the agency is set to launch four astronauts around the moon, the deepest human spaceflight since the final Apollo lunar landing in 1972.
The launch window for Artemis II , as the mission is called, opens at 6:24 p.m. ET.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration teams have been preparing the vehicles to depart from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center on the planned roughly 10-day trip. Crew members have trained for years for this moment.
Reid Wiseman, the NASA astronaut serving as mission commander, said he doesn’t fear taking the voyage. A widower, he does worry at times about what he is putting his daughters through.
“I could have a very comfortable life for them,” Wiseman said in an interview last September.
“But I’m also a human, and I see the spirit in their eyes that is burning in my soul too. And so we’ve just got to never stop going.”
Wiseman’s crewmates on Artemis II are NASA’s Victor Glover and Christina Koch, as well as Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen.
What are the goals for Artemis II?
The biggest one: Safely fly the crew on vehicles that have never carried astronauts before.
The towering Space Launch System rocket has the job of lofting a vehicle called Orion into space and on its way to the moon.
Orion is designed to carry the crew around the moon and back. Myriad systems on the ship—life support, communications, navigation—will be tested with the astronauts on board.
SLS and Orion don’t have much flight experience. The vehicles last flew in 2022, when the agency completed its uncrewed Artemis I mission .
How is the mission expected to unfold?
Artemis II will begin when SLS takes off from a launchpad in Florida with Orion stacked on top of it.
The so-called upper stage of SLS will later separate from the main part of the rocket with Orion attached, and use its engine to set up the latter vehicle for a push to the moon.
After Orion separates from the upper stage, it will conduct what is called a translunar injection—the engine firing that commits Orion to soaring out to the moon. It will fly to the moon over the course of a few days and travel around its far side.
Orion will face a tough return home after speeding through space. As it hits Earth’s atmosphere, Orion will be flying at 25,000 miles an hour and face temperatures of 5,000 degrees as it slows down. The capsule is designed to land under parachutes in the Pacific Ocean, not far from San Diego.
Is it possible Artemis II will be delayed?
Yes.
For safety reasons, the agency won’t launch if certain tough weather conditions roll through the Cape Canaveral, Fla., area. Delays caused by technical problems are possible, too. NASA has other dates identified for the mission if it doesn’t begin April 1.
Who are the astronauts flying on Artemis II?
The crew will be led by Wiseman, a retired Navy pilot who completed military deployments before joining NASA’s astronaut corps. He traveled to the International Space Station in 2014.
Two other astronauts will represent NASA during the mission: Glover, an experienced Navy pilot, and Koch, who began her career as an electrical engineer for the agency and once spent a year at a research station in the South Pole. Both have traveled to the space station before.
Hansen is a military pilot who joined Canada’s astronaut corps in 2009. He will be making his first trip to space.
Koch’s participation in Artemis II will mark the first time a woman has flown beyond orbits near Earth. Glover and Hansen will be the first African-American and non-American astronauts, respectively, to do the same.
What will the astronauts do during the flight?
The astronauts will evaluate how Orion flies, practice emergency procedures and capture images of the far side of the moon for scientific and exploration purposes (they may become the first humans to see parts of the far side of the lunar surface). Health-tracking projects of the astronauts are designed to inform future missions.
Those efforts will play out in Orion’s crew module, which has about two minivans worth of living area.
On board, the astronauts will spend about 30 minutes a day exercising, using a device that allows them to do dead lifts, rowing and more. Sleep will come in eight-hour stretches in hammocks.
There is a custom-made warmer for meals, with beef brisket and veggie quiche on the menu.
Each astronaut is permitted two flavored beverages a day, including coffee. The crew will hold one hourlong shared meal each day.
The Universal Waste Management System—that’s the toilet—uses air flow to pull fluid and solid waste away into containers.
What happens after Artemis II?
Assuming it goes well, NASA will march on to Artemis III, scheduled for next year. During that operation, NASA plans to launch Orion with crew members on board and have the ship practice docking with lunar-lander vehicles that Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin have been developing. The rendezvous operations will occur relatively close to Earth.
NASA hopes that its contractors and the agency itself are ready to attempt one or more lunar landing missions in 2028. Many current and former spaceflight officials are skeptical that timeline is feasible.
