Taking its roots in the Robert Fleming Bank founded in 1873, the Fleming family office merged with Stonehage in 2015, another family office based in South Africa which grew strongly in the 1990s and served the main fortunes in the country. If you had any doubt about a link with 007, Hélie de Cornois, partner and head of family office Luxembourg at Stonehage Fleming, confirmed that Ian Fleming, the author of the James Bond spy novels, was the uncle of a partner currently working in the firm.
Many families fall apart upon the third generation. It starts with the entrepreneur, moving to a consolidator to end with the dilapidator
Breaking the typical family cycle fate
De Cornois thinks that the strength of the group lies with a multiplicity of services--succession and wealth planning, fiduciary advice, investment management, financial and personal administration--offered over 14 jurisdictions, but he takes pride in communicating their ability to serve families over several generations, as for the sixth generations of the Fleming family. Beyond the often-legal challenges, it is also about maintaining a family legacy over time in terms of financial wealth as well as the cultural, social and intellectual heritage.
“Many families fall apart upon the third generation. It starts with the entrepreneur, moving to a consolidator to end with the dilapidator,” remarked de Cornois during an interview on 22 November 2024. His role is to help them avoiding such an outcome.
Therefore, he explained that legacy management is about establishing processes to identify the child/children to handle the various family matters. SF’s longstanding and broad experience enables it to share the experience from other families on the proper timing to involve children on family affairs, for instance.
Adapting services to an evolving client profile
“We manage old money from family transmitting wealth over several generations, but also self-made women and men as well as high-level sports athletes,” said de Cornois.
He thinks that a distinct advantage of SF over private banks is that the services go beyond the management of the “moveable assets” of families. “Our goal is to accompany a family full stop,” stated de Cornois. He argued that SF can help manage the various valuable assets of families, such as art collections. Yet it could also support families for single services as appropriate. He doubted whether a private bank could advise a family solely on the management of an art collection, for instance.
SF acts as a “full-service family” in liquid assets in the EU thanks to a Mifid license and, as such, it invests on behalf of its clients in discretionary portfolios. In other entities of the group--but not yet in the European Union--SF offers a fund-of-funds of third-party private equity firms focused on the UK and the tech industry.
With an investment approach described in previous articles and , SF also proposes co-investments in certain non-EU entities to its family offices, i.e., direct investments in private companies while ranking pari passu with third-party private equity funds.
Some family offices can also designate SF to define a global investment strategy to oversee all the assets of the family, a role that it called “gatekeeper.” It then takes the role of managing the relationships with third-party banks and asset managers of the family. “Yet again we see ourselves as complementary to banks.”
Steward (“regisseur”): a role with its unique set of skills and qualification
After studying business law and taxation, de Cornois started his career as an estate planner at a French private bank where he used the technical knowledge to help his clients in a relatively rigid framework. His technical background continues to be useful at time, but de Cornois noted his role at SF encompasses many more elements such as the personal relationship with the families.
These professionals are generally not lawyers or notaries but will advise their clients to ensure that some provisions are concluded in the document written by the registered professionals. The stewards see their roles as complementary.
The industry in the English-speaking world also promotes the TEP designation, which stands for trust and estate practitioner. This is gained after having accumulated qualifications and experience in activities such as wealth planning, management and accounting of trusts and estates, taxation, etc.
Ever greater internationalisation of the group
De Cornois realised quickly in his career the need to internationalise his profile. After his move to Luxembourg, he initially served the French-speaking world whereas nowadays, he helps clients based in the US, UK and South Africa. Establishing contacts between the Romance and the English-speaking worlds have become an integral part of his role as “people are moving much more than in the past.”
Gradually taking more responsibilities at SF, he is now in charge of fully exploiting the expertise of the group and developing the multi-family businesses and corporate services (fund domiciliation) to make Luxembourg the continental springboard of the group. Its office grew from around nine people when de Cornois started at Stonehage Fleming in 2021 to 52 employees today (out of more than 1,000 employees in the group). The group is majority-owned by the management and its employees.