SFOs and MFOs

naah, its has nothing to do with UFOs. SFO is Single Family Office and MFO is multiple family offices. I should admit that though I always knew of their existence, I never knew the formal terminology nor the minimum criteria till today. For those of you who haven't heard of them, SFO manage the family portfolio and include services like children admission to best institutes for the worlds richest. These SFOs include not more than 10people on an average, and manage assets of $100 million or more and are paid upto nearly $3 million. SFOs are all over the world, after a certain stage it becomes very difficult for the family to run their own family business, a private team of professionals is hired to manage the assets on their behalf, they inturn act as strategic decision makers along with banks to run the business. MFOs are a team of SFOs together along with some banks and other financial firms, which manage more than one family assets.

This system is not alien to the rich families, it is the same system followed wrt law firms also. An individual lawyer or a team manages critical decisions with legal impact for rich families, these private lawyers play a major role in the family over decades and help in both domestic and foreign decisions.

These privae law firms, financial firms ... etc which work only for rich families and manage assets worth billions of dollars played and will play key role in the strategic development not just of the family and those whose lives revolve around the family business, but in the development at a higher level thanks to their huge deals with most banks (some private and some nationalised), the hedge funds they manage, the assets and equities their masters own.

Afterall he who has the gold makes the rules :)