A family office: strategy and innovation across the portfolio
Reading a family office portfolio as one system
We reviewed a family office's holdings as a single portfolio and proposed one role to manage the links between them.
At a glance
- Client: a family office with several operating companies
- Engagement: portfolio strategy, reporting to the principal
- HAM role: strategy lead
- Timing: from spring 2026, in progress
The situation
A family with several operating companies. Each business had its own leadership and its own plan. Nobody was looking across all of them: where one company's asset could help another, and a single view the principal could decide from.
What we did
HAM reviewed the holdings together instead of one brief at a time.
- Wrote the working arrangement: one portfolio, separate workstreams, which company goes first and why, and a weekly meeting with the principal.
- Proposed a monthly principal brief. One page across every line: what moved, what is stuck, the one decision needed.
- Mapped the links between the businesses, and tested each one before it went near a plan.
- Set out what each company's team sees and what stays with the principal.
How we checked it
We kept to three rules.
The proposal names the decisions the role would own and who it answers to. The fee comes last.
Every company keeps its leadership. The role covers what nobody currently covers.
Before a link between two businesses reaches the principal, it is marked Confirmed, Reported or Estimated. An idea that has only been discussed stays labelled as that.
Where it stands
- The principal asked HAM to propose how one role would work across the whole office
- The proposal is being written. Nothing is signed
This page claims the work done, and no outcome beyond it.
What we built
The working arrangement, principal briefings, the monthly brief format and the graded link map across the portfolio. Shown at design stage with sensitive detail removed.
What's next
If the role is agreed, the work moves from mapping the portfolio to managing the links between its companies, reporting to the principal.