General – Lowenhaupt Global Advisors Australia

Forget All The Misdeeds – Just Trust Us

May 20, 2016 | By Charles Lowenhaupt

Cerulli Associates says that US high net worth clients prefer to hold their money at wirehouses, private banks and trust companies. This includes clients with more than $20 million dollars in that group using the wirehouses, private banks and trust companies.

Since the financial crisis in 2008, the world’s 20 largest banks have paid more than $235 billion in fines. One might ask why, after years of misbehavior by many institutions, are wealthy investors still relying on them? One might also ask how the brokerage industry can continue to attract those wealth holders given all the misdeeds and the daily fines and penalties they continue to rack up?Read More

On Privacy And The “Panama Papers”

April 6, 2016 | By Charles Lowenhaupt

The leak of 11 million documents (“The Panama Papers”) from the files of a Panama law firm, Mossack Fonseca, represents an unprecedented exposure of what is considered highly confidential information about the secret financial dealings of the some of the world’s highest profile leaders and wealthiest individuals.Read More

The Export-Import Bank: Why it Still Matters

By Donna Gilding

The Export-Import Bank was created in February 1934, as part of the New Deal, to finance trade with the newly established Soviet Union. A second bank was created a month later to finance trade with Cuba and shortly thereafter expanded to include all countries with the exception of the Soviet Union. Congress passed legislation to combine the two banks in 1935. They also granted the unified bank more powers along with more capital. While the Bank did extend credit to a few countries, such as Italy and China prior to World War II, its primary efforts were concentrated on Latin America as part of the Good Neighbor Policy.Read More

Why Fairness Trumps Equality In Sharing The Family Wealth

By Charles Lowenhaupt

Question: When should wealth owners plan to leave unequal portions to their children?

Answer: Strange as it might seem, “almost always.”

Before dividing an estate, wealth owners need to get past the definitional ambiguity of “equal” and “unequal.” Most wealth holders define “equal” as a dollar-for-dollar split where each child gets the same amount. Yet another perspective might consider meeting needs equally, regardless of amounts. Research shows that about two-thirds of people choose dollar-for-dollar equality at death — but in our experience, most opt for equally meeting needs while they are alive.Read More

What Can’t Money Buy?

By Charles Lowenhaupt

The challenge of living with great wealth or raising children with great wealth is putting money in its place. That notion may seem oddly counter-intuitive because most people believe they have dominion over their money, not the other way around. In fact, money poorly managed often exerts a force of its own and has unintended – and often negative – consequences.

The key question is this: How should the wealth creator or wealth inheritor lead life to its fullest without drowning in the administration and emotion that can come with riches?Read More

Mobility and Freedom From Wealth

By Charles Lowenhaupt

The noted journalist Robert Frank tells us that the world’s rich are buying visas and passports to the tune of billions a year. Large private jet sales are booming, and luxury travel is being sold in every magazine and newspaper. A friend of mine whose parents were Holocaust survivors owns hotels in six or seven places around the world and in each maintains a penthouse. When I ask whether his real estate holdings are good investments, he says they are his best: “They lose money, but they allow me the comfort of knowing that I can always leave where I am to find security somewhere else.”

If wealth is for anything, it is for freedom – freedom to lead the life you want to lead, freedom to become all you can become, freedom to find freedom when a homeland does not offer it, and freedom to travel. Mobility is a luxury that the rich have become accustomed to whether they come from the U.S., from China, from Russia, from Saudi Arabia or from Venezuela.Read More

What Does It Take To Get Rich?

By Charles Lowenhaupt

In my experience, getting rich takes vision, hard work, and good luck. Wealth inheritors have the luck, but they often lack the vision and hard work. So preserving wealth is a whole different matter from creating it.

I have been very fortunate to have known wealth creators, either directly or through their descendants. One of the most impressive I ever met was a Japanese industrialist who I had the privilege of meeting as a teenager.

He is still alive today and almost one hundred years old, and his life is instructive about what is possible.Read More

Reg Reform Won’t Bring Clients Back to Public Markets

By Charles Lowenhaupt

Financial Advisor IQ
July 2013

Speaking at Finra’s annual conference in Washington, D.C., last month, Richard Ketchum, the securities industry self-regulator’s CEO said, “The financial services industry has weathered many challenges in the last few years: a recession, significant frauds, a flash crash. And while we have worked hard to prevent those kinds of events from being repeated, they have had a lasting effect on investors’ trust and created a true crisis of confidence in the markets.”

So what does Finra propose to do about the financial chicanery and technological glitches that have shaken financial markets in recent years? Impose more regulation. For the world’s wealthiest families, however, mere regulatory reform isn’t enough.
Click to read full story