Live, Online Program

Compounding Your Family’s Wealth: Building a Multigenerational Total Wealth Portfolio

May 2024

Daily 9:00 AM – 12:30 PM Eastern

A 3-day, interactive program to help you reimagine your family’s long-term strategy for growing your wealth.

During our time together in this three-day program, you will learn how to design and lead your family’s total wealth strategy. You will understand how to increase your portfolio’s resilience in today’s turbulent environment and through the next generation.


WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO BUILD A RESILIENT WEALTH STRATEGY TODAY?

Growing a family’s total wealth over generations (including operating businesses, financial assets, family assets, and other investments) requires more than placing good bets.

It also calls for a number of critical ingredients such as a commitment to the aspirations and values of the family, an understanding of today’s turbulent landscape and its risks and opportunities, understanding important family enterprise cycles, recurring investment in family talent, proper engagement of the next generation, the right governance oversight, and skills in the artful design of an agile wealth portfolio that generates lasting value.

These and other approaches and tools for growing wealth in the new economy are explored in-depth in the program.

WHAT IS A FAMILY’S TOTAL WEALTH PORTFOLIO?

A family’s total wealth portfolio is the collection of assets and activities, that the family owns or controls, which bring financial and other rewards to the owning family. A family’s total wealth portfolio typically includes the family’s businesses, financial investments, investment companies, family office, real estate, other ventures, family assets (such as homes and art), philanthropic and social impact commitments, and important family activities that unite and develop the family.

No family wealth strategy is complete without planning for all of the family’s investments and activities in an integrated manner to help the family achieve its big ambitions.

PROGRAM OVERVIEW

THE TRADITIONAL METHOD OF WEALTH ACCUMULATION IN FAMILIES

Over generations, successful enterprising families accumulate wealth in a similar pattern—by placing good business and other investment bets and nurturing unity among family owners. They create, acquire, and grow companies and other investments due to one or more family members’ interests, good instincts, persistent hard work, and personal relationships, combined with fortuitous market timing.

Over time, it is common for a family’s wealth portfolio to include an array of important assets and activities of the family: businesses, investments, philanthropy, alongside a variety of costs and spending areas. The family also develops organizations and governance for their wealth such as a family office, investment committee, owners council, board of directors, board of trustees, and others. By the time the next generation begins to express interest and inquire about the portfolio, it has often become a rather complex collection of assets and activities whose underlying purpose and logic may be rather difficult to explain.

This opportunistic method of wealth portfolio construction can produce sizeable wealth within a generation or two, leading families to believe they have the “right formula.” However, over time, sometimes even within the first and second generations, this opportunistic portfolio construction—while common—can become a considerable vulnerability for a family. Add to it a turbulent environment with multiple colliding forces causing volatility and uncertainty, and the weaknesses in the portfolio strategy become apparent.

Is your family’s portfolio designed and managed for your family to grow the value you want to create?

Is it designed to succeed over the long-term? Is it constructed to withstand today’s turbulence? Is it constructed to unite your family and excite the next generation?

It may be time to upgrade your family’s wealth strategy and clarify your governance and leadership approach to it.

FAMILIES NEED A TOTAL WEALTH STRATEGY

In today’s turbulent environment, a comprehensive wealth-building strategy is essential.

Deliberate wealth portfolio planning and construction, together with anticipating future turbulence and the family’s future needs, is critical for advancing the family’s wealth portfolio to its next growth stage. Strategy involves a design process based on dialogue and alignment among the family owners regarding the vision, goals, and tradeoffs to build a portfolio that achieves the family’s wealth objectives in this turbulent era.

Importantly, a total wealth portfolio strategy must also recognize that financial asset accumulation is but one consideration in building multigenerational wealth and success. There are several ingredients needed to build value across generations—many of which are easily overlooked in pursuit of financial gains.

In this program, you will learn the ingredients to build your family’s long-term value in the new economy.


CFEG Education Programs Key Takeaways  PROGRAM TAKEAWAYS

In this program, you will:

  • Learn how to design, lead, and oversee your family’s wealth strategy for the new economy
  • Understand today’s turbulent environment and the options, benefits, and risks for growing wealth in this context
  • Discover the pathways for building long-term value through understanding the several ingredients needed to build multigenerational wealth
  • Learn how to make wise decisions about selecting the right assets and activities that will power one’s family wealth portfolio into the future
  • Understand the governance and talent that families need to develop or hire to execute and monitor their wealth strategy

PROGRAM TOPICS

The Multigenerational Total Family Wealth Approach for Family Enterprises

  • How the “right” wealth strategy helps achieve multiple family goals including growing assets
  • The ingredients for constructing a strategy for your family’s multigenerational wealth creation and growth
  • How the external world and today’s turbulent environment shape a family’s wealth building options and decisions
  • CFEG’s proprietary tools that offer fresh, customized perspectives, metrics, and guides for growing your family’s wealth
  • Key financial and ownership considerations to be satisfied in a multigenerational portfolio and wealth strategy

A Strategic Process for Developing a Family’s Total Wealth Strategy in this New Age

  • How to construct a family wealth strategy to sustain through this turbulent era and into the next generation
  • Options for building wealth over the next decades, and the tradeoffs, scenario-planning, and decisions required to grow value
  • Talent and governance to lead your family enterprise wealth portfolio
  • The Owners’ lens for guiding, directing, and monitoring family wealth from the owners’ perspective

Long-term Success for Family Enterprise Wealth in this Turbulent Era

  • How your wealth strategy must align with the requirements of family success in this turbulent era
  • How wealth travels and transforms over generations, and how to move to or remain on the wealth-building path you want to be on
  • The key lessons of long-term family prosperity from families that have endured for generations 

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Faculty

Professor John A. Davis (Program Chair)
Founder and Chairman, Cambridge Family Enterprise Group
Professor of Family Enterprise, MIT Sloan

Professor John Davis is a globally recognized pioneer and authority on family enterprise, family wealth, and the family office. He is a researcher, educator, author, architect of the field’s most impactful conceptual frameworks, and advisor to leading families around the world. He founded CFEG in 1989 as a thought leadership, advisory, and education organization for multigenerational families. He leads the family enterprise programs and courses at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Professor Davis is the lead researcher of the recent study, The Future of Family Enterprise: Turbulence and Transformation in the 2020s. He is author of the books Enduring Advantage, Next Generation Success and Generation to Generation and an extensive library of articles and case studies on family enterprise.

 

Matt Hively
Teaching Fellow, Cambridge Institute for Family Enterprise
Senior Advisor, Cambridge Family Enterprise Group

Matt Hively advises the ownership groups of family-owned enterprises around the world on issues of long-term value creation. This includes portfolio construction, investment strategy, corporate growth, organization design, corporate and investment governance, and the alignment of the owners around a shared vision and strategy. His primary focus is advising on portfolio transformation and strategy, including portfolio design, asset allocation, diversification, divestiture, liquidity, international expansion, risk management, governance, and owners’ alignment around their future direction. Mr. Hively has held C-suite leadership roles in businesses throughout Latin America in a range of industries: financial services, industrial, mining, hotels, and real estate. He formerly spent over a decade at Bain & Company, where he drove corporate strategy and value creation for corporate and private equity clients across a broad range of industrial sectors.

 

Jason Jay

Professor Jason Jay
Director, Sustainability Initiative, MIT Sloan
Senior Advisor, Cambridge Family Enterprise Group

Jason Jay is a Senior Lecturer and Director of the Sustainability Initiative at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He teaches courses on leadership, strategy, and innovation for sustainable business and is faculty director of the Strategies for Sustainable Business program. He teaches family social impact, sustainable investing, leading change, and intergenerational communication in the Future Family Enterprise program. Professor Jay organizes partnerships between MIT students, alumni, faculty, and researchers, with businesses, governments, NGOs, and hybrid organizations to build a community of innovators for sustainability. He advises organizations and families on their sustainability, philanthropic, and family social impact strategies. He is author of the book, Breaking Through Gridlock.

 

Martin Liechti
Teaching Fellow, Cambridge Institute for Family Enterprise
Partner and Advisor, Parkview Group

Martin Liechti is a partner with Parkview Group, a privately-owned, global wealth management firm based in Zurich. He advises multigenerational families throughout the world, across multiple jurisdictions, on their wealth strategies, wealth structures, and wealth governance. In private workshops, he teaches inheritors about investment fundamentals, investment oversight, and the role of owners. In a university setting, he teaches in the Leading the Family Office program at IMD. Mr. Liechti is a veteran of the wealth management industry with over 30 years of experience as an advisor and executive leader. During his career at UBS, he led a team of 1600 bankers throughout the Americas, and held a leading role with the UBS Optimus Foundation, a grant-making organization, which became one of the largest of its kind in Switzerland.

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Registration

Who Should Attend?

Enterprising families who:

  • Are ready to take a deep look at their family’s total wealth portfolio from a multigenerational perspective, and consider changes to their portfolio and their approaches to building wealth
  • Own some combination of operating companies and/or investments—such as direct investments, private equity investments, tangible assets, or liquid assets (now or soon)
  • Have an interest in supporting community activities and/or giving back through philanthropy, social impact, impact investing, social entrepreneurship, or in other ways, since investing with a purpose is explored in this program

Teams of 3+ Individuals are Encouraged. Individuals in these roles ought to attend:

  • Family members who are actively engaged in revitalizing their family wealth portfolio, either in making investment decisions or strategic planning for the family’s wealth
  • Family leaders and governance members who are motivated to learn, explore, and assess ways to elevate their family wealth portfolio and its governance (e.g. members of the owners council, portfolio board, investment committee, or family office board)
  • Next generation members who are being positioned to step into active roles related to the family wealth portfolio
  • Non-family investment officers and investment committee members may attend if they accompany members of the owning family. (Please note: This is not a program for wealth managers, financial advisors, or family office CIOs. It is a program for family owners.)


Tuition

This is a live, online program offered during fixed dates and times. Participants attend live. No recordings will be made available.

$2,800 for the first registrant
$2,300 for each additional registrant from the same family, company, or family office
In U.S. Dollars

 


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