Private Banks

Family offices have never been more sophisticated than they are now. 2026 has, so far, produced more data than usual. UBS's Global Family Office Report found that fewer than half of family offices have a formal governance framework, and only 35% have a full succession plan, this despite running institutional-grade portfolios with investment committees and full-time staff. J.P. Morgan Private Bank's 2026 report found something along the same lines. They stated that families face more internal conflict over major decisions, and are increasingly bringing in outside specialists rather than relying on the family judgement alone. Not because their judgement is low quality, but because the stakes involved are so high that having an outside voice can remove emotion and reduce mistakes when decisions are made purely on instinct.

Coutts published succession research this year with a similar thread running through it. Without a formal, independent structure, family decisions tend to get made by whoever is loudest in the room, or whoever stands to gain the most. Deutsche Bank Private Bank's Salman Mahdi made a point that has a similar bearing. The families that do well are often the ones who let go of running things themselves and bring in people to do it properly, not because the owner is incapable, but because ownership and judgement are different skills, and mixing them is where mistakes are made.

The families managing risk best are not the ones with the most information. They are the ones who have built an independent structure and independent people into the moments that matter most, so a decision is not resting on one person alone, a single relationship or indeed one source of information that they cannot easily verify.

How this applies to a superyacht purchase is easy to understand. A superyacht is one of the largest single purchases a family office can approve, often larger than property, art and automobiles, yet it lacks the structure that a lot of other large purchases have. Let's contemplate this: a superyacht is a multi-jurisdiction and complex purchase. There is the vehicle that it is purchased through, the ownership structure, the flag state to go with, the classification society, the manning requirements, the berthing location, the management companies. Anthony Austin Yachts' own experience shows that when individuals are faced with such decisions, often for the first time, there is a lack of objective decision making; instead there is a rush to complete the purchase before a full ownership plan has been established.

The families who navigate this well tend to do what these reports describe. They bring in someone independent, with no stake in whether the deal happens, whose only job is protecting the person paying. For a superyacht, close to twenty years at sea and a Master Mariner qualification is what objective and independent advice looks like applied to a purchase. The principle is the same one private banks are describing to their own clients. The biggest decisions deserve the same discipline as the smaller ones, not less.

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This article is general commentary. It is not legal, tax, financial or investment advice.