Family office
Prime Brokerage Anatomy™
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Another one of those things, like LIBOR and supply chain financing that seems to ordinary, unfussy, sensible and harmless, that in its way points up the holy terror of non-linear interactions in financial markets. A family office is a vehicle established by a ultra high net worth investor to manage her own, and her family’s money. Now some people move in circles we mere mortals cannot imagine readers: they have enough dough to employ financial wizards to work it to their great advantage. Hence they hire an office, some operations people, and away they go. And why shouldn’t they?
At one level, this is harmless, dull, dreary: well, not dreary, exactly — it’s hard not to be a bit glamorous when you have a super yacht in Monte Carlo and your own Island in the Caribbean — but for a prime broker these are like hedge funds, only smaller — usually smaller; not always — and with no outside investors making them all the more harmless: no ERISA money, no AML worries, no sudden NAV drops through precipitate withdrawals from dissatisfied investors.