A Paris based group called the International Federation of Family Office, or IFFO, is trying to pull together the world's family office industry under one umbrella, at a moment when the amount of private wealth these firms oversee keeps climbing. The nascent federation has already brought in national family office associations from Belgium, France, Lithuania and Canada, and says it has established contacts in Germany, Italy, Switzerland and Singapore as it looks to expand further.
Frederick Crot, IFFO's president, has argued that wealthy families around the world tend to run into the same set of problems regardless of where they are based, from succession inside closely held businesses to transferring wealth between generations to structuring philanthropy, making a shared network useful even across very different countries. He has also framed the push for a global umbrella group as a sign that family offices, an industry that has traditionally guarded its privacy closely, are becoming somewhat more open to organizing collectively.
