Pitcairn Family Office

Family Business Matters has had a long-standing relationship with Pitcairn, one of the world’s leading Family Offices. Dedicated to helping families sustain and grow their substantial, often complex financial assets. Pitcairn also supports the unique heritage of its clients across multiple generations. The firm is recognized as an innovator and global leader in the Family Office industry since its inception in 1923.

Established to preserve the wealth and values of the descendants of John Pitcairn, co-founder of what is now PPG Industries, the firm evolved into a multi-family office in 1987. Today, Pitcairn’s pioneering spirit continues to redefine the family office experience for generations of the world’s wealthiest families.

Headquartered in Jenkintown, Pennsylvania, the firm also has offices in New York and Washington, DC as well as a network of resources around the world.

Accumulation of Wealth Creates Both Rare Opportunities and Imposing Challenges

Family members contend with a host of responsibilities ranging from:

  • Managing Investments
  • Monitoring Estate Plans
  • Overseeing Preparation of Tax Returns
  • Supervising Philanthropic Giving
  • Keeping up with the constant flow of paperwork

Pitcairn helps wealthy families address these unique needs. Their long experience as a Family Office enables them to not only help families manage day-to-day operations, but also help them see into the future, preparing for well thought-out family business transitions that are the hallmark of successful families.

Investing with Family in Mind

Pitcairn believes that family success is measured over the course of generations. This long-term goal requires a strategic approach to global asset allocation, one that is designed to maintain the purchasing power of the family’s assets while carefully managing multiple sources of risk.

Pitcairn’s due diligence process is a rigorous combination of quantitative and qualitative screening. Internal staff members, supported by our network of external partners, are accountable for identifying and monitoring money managers and examining their holdings, performance and operating procedures. Pitcairn’s careful internal review and approval process ensures that they provide clients with access to best-in-class money managers across a full array of asset classes. Pitcairn favors a blend of concentrated active managers and passive managers. This hybrid approach allows the firm to capitalize on the returns of exceptional active managers, while tempering risk and expense with the addition of solid passive managers.

A unique feature of Pitcairn’s investment approach is their Tax Optimization Program. Pitcairn maximizes opportunities for tax loss harvesting, wash-sale management, short-term gain deferral, and other tactics, to reduce the portion of returns lost to taxes. Their clients have experienced enhanced performance in the US equity portion of their portfolios of 3.7% per year from 2008 through 2011.

Planning for Family Business Transitions

Successful planning requires collaboration and a long-term view — not simply 5 years, but 10 and 20 years down the road — in order to take advantage of opportunities that have the greatest impact.

Most successful families truly commit not only to planning for the transition of wealth to the next generation, but also to providing ongoing communication and education for family members, developing workable governance structures, planning for leadership succession and re-evaluation of wealth structures on a periodic basis.

Pitcairn’s strategic wealth planning process incorporates estate, trust, tax, philanthropic and financial planning as well as risk management to develop sophisticated and comprehensive approaches to meeting your goals for the family as a whole and for each individual household.

A Fiduciary Dedicated to Family Success

Pitcairn has a long track record of providing innovative fiduciary planning that has maximized value to generations of family trust beneficiaries. They provide a distinctive combination of first-rate fiduciary planning and services that draw from their deep knowledge of the role that trusts play in families. Pitcairn’s internal fiduciary capabilities enable them to provide an integrated approach to wealth planning and have the flexibility to implement creative strategies.

Caring for Day-to-Day Family Operations

Pitcairn’s administrative services are designed to help families manage the complexity that comes with multi-generational wealth by ensuring that the day-to-day work is taken care of efficiently and with careful attention to detail. They provide families with a full spectrum of administrative and reporting services including:

  • Personal Accounting and Budgeting that includes bill paying and the management of expenses for multiple properties
  • Administration and Accounting that extends to multiple entities in the family’s wealth structure including foundations and family limited partnerships
  • Tax Compliance that provides individuals, partnerships, trusts and foundations with the benefits of integration that accrue when everything is handled by one company
  • Consolidated Investment and Financial Reporting that gives families a snapshot of their entire wealth structures, aggregating assets held by Pitcairn along with other advisors and businesses

Supporting Family Philanthropy

Pitcairn’s role is to help families realize their goals as efficiently as possible. Whether your family is just getting started or are using a private foundation, a charitable trust or a donor-advised fund to implement their philanthropic goals, Pitcairn provides support and guidance to ensure that your family’s philanthropic efforts are productive and sustainable.

For additional information, please contact Pitcairn:
Phone: (800) 211 1745
Email: clientservice@pitcairn.com
Website:www.pitcairn.com