What is this ownership for?
Connecting wealth and ownership to the life, responsibilities and future they are intended to support.
Centre of Excellence / Owners & Principals
Owners & Principals
Ownership becomes easier to govern when its purpose is clear.
Adamas helps owners and principals bring coherence to purpose, governance, structures and advisers, connecting present decisions to family responsibilities and long-term continuity.
Arrange a Confidential ConversationThe central idea
Ownership is a responsibility, not merely a collection of assets and structures.
Successful owners rarely lack advisers, institutions or opportunities. The harder task is ensuring that each serves a coherent purpose and operates within a clear system of authority.
Without a clear ownership mandate, structures, advisers and decisions can accumulate without anyone remaining responsible for the whole. Authority becomes dispersed and continuity depends too heavily on individuals.
Adamas helps owners step back from individual issues and establish the purpose, governance architecture and decision processes that should guide the family’s affairs as a whole.
How can an owner retain judgement when structures, advisers and responsibilities have become more complex than any one person can hold in view?
The questions beneath ownership
Six questions every owner and principal should be able to answer
What responsibilities accompany ownership?
Clarifying the obligations owed to family, enterprise, institutions and future generations.
Where does decision authority belong?
Separating ownership, governance and executive authority so that responsibility is clear.
Which advisers and institutions should be trusted?
Establishing mandates, accountability and information requirements for independently appointed professionals.
How should consequential decisions be governed?
Creating a process that protects independence when circumstances or advisers create pressure.
How will responsibility pass?
Preparing ownership, knowledge and authority for a spouse, children or future institution.
How Adamas Advisors helps
Four disciplines of responsible ownership
Purpose and ownership mandate
Translate personal objectives, family responsibilities and long-term intentions into a clear statement of ownership purpose.
Governance architecture
Clarify decision rights, reserved matters, reporting lines and the relationship between owners, family and institutions.
Adviser coordination and accountability
Define mandates, information flows, escalation procedures and accountability across independently appointed advisers.
Succession and continuity
Prepare people, knowledge, authority and institutions for the transfer of responsibility over time.
Our work with owners and principals
Independent judgement across the ownership and governance system.
- Ownership purpose and family objectives
- Governance and decision rights
- Reporting and accountability
- Adviser mandates and information flows
- Coordination with legal, tax, investment and other professional advisers
- Family-office purpose and operating model
- Preparation of successors
- Continuity through transition
Why owners and principals work with Adamas Advisors
Advice shaped around the family, the owner and the responsibility
Specialist institutions necessarily begin with their own discipline. Adamas begins with the owner: the source and purpose of the wealth, the family responsibilities surrounding it, the decisions already made and the future it is intended to support.
Alexander von der Vellen, Founder and Principal, combines experience in international private banking, fiduciary responsibility and strategic counsel to families. Adamas coordinates with independently appointed investment firms, banks, lawyers, tax advisers and fiduciaries while concentrating on objectives, governance, information flows and decision responsibility.
Stewardship Principle
Responsible ownership expresses a clear purpose. Every structure, adviser and decision should serve the family’s objectives and remain intelligible to those who inherit responsibility.
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