A Conductor of Cultural Heritage: The Vision of François Mollat du Jourdin (MJ&Cie)

MJ & Cie, 25 years of supporting entrepreneurial families

As the concept of the family office asserts itself as one of the pillars of contemporary wealth management, the debate focuses more and more on the sophistication of investment strategies. Yet to reduce this profession to asset allocation alone would be to miss the point.

For more than twenty years, François Mollat du Jourdin has been supporting families, often the product of great entrepreneurial adventures, whose assets go far beyond the financial dimension alone. For the Founding Chairman of MJ & Cie, the role of a family office is first and foremost to orchestrate all the asset, family and strategic dimensions that surround a private fortune.

Like an orchestra conductor, it coordinates expertise, ensures overall coherence and supports families in preserving and passing on not only their wealth but also their history.

On the occasion of MJ & Cie's 25th anniversary, he looks back on the evolution of the profession, the changes in the international heritage landscape and what, in his opinion, will continue to make the difference in the years to come.

For more than twenty years, you've been working with families who are often the product of great entrepreneurial adventures. When it comes down to it, what is the primary mission of a family office: to manage assets... or to preserve a family history over the long term?

An estate is obviously made up of assets, both financial and non-financial, that need to be organized, structured and developed over time. But in practice, it's very difficult to completely dissociate wealth from the history that gave rise to it.

Most of the families we work with are the product of strong entrepreneurial adventures. Their wealth is the fruit of a journey, a vision, sometimes several generations of commitment and value creation. In this context, the family office's mission goes far beyond financial strategy alone.

It is also about preserving continuity, maintaining coherence between the different dimensions of wealth, and supporting families in the way they wish to inscribe their history in the long term, across generations. Heritage is a tool. But it is also the reflection of a family trajectory that needs to be understood, respected and organized over time.

From the outset, MJ & Cie has been built on a model with no distribution or commissions, remunerated solely by fees. Why do you feel this independence is essential when it comes to supporting families over the long term?

This independence, which lies at the heart of our model, enables us to remain focused on a single issue: what's relevant for the customer, and only for him.

When we're working with families on issues as important as the organization of their wealth, investments, transfers and governance, it's essential that we can provide advice in a totally independent framework. The fact that we are remunerated exclusively on a fee basis enables us to guarantee this neutrality.

We are not in the business of distributing products or promoting investment solutions. Our role is first and foremost to analyze situations, advise families and coordinate the various areas of expertise required to manage their assets.

This independence creates a very clear alignment with the families we accompany and is, in my view, an essential condition for a long-term relationship of trust.

Beyond investment issues, today's families are faced with challenges of governance, transmission and organization of wealth over several generations. How is the role of a family office evolving in the face of these more human and familial dimensions?

Today, much of the thinking surrounding the family office, which has become a fashionable concept in wealth management, focuses on the investment dimension: how to improve the offering, how to access more sophisticated opportunities, how to optimize performance, etc...

But for me, the family office is not just about investment.

I see it more as an orchestration of expertise, including, of course, investment-related expertise. But there's also legal and tax expertise - including wealth engineering and the organization of wealth structures - family governance and "next gen" issues, transmission, and administrative support.

The role of the family office is precisely to articulate these different areas of expertise - to bring these "musicians" into dialogue with one another, if you will. Investment is an important element, but it's only part of the whole. The true value of a family office lies in its ability to maintain a coherent, global approach to the family's assets over the long term.

Since MJ & Cie was founded in 2001, family assets have become increasingly international and financial environments more complex. What do you think has changed most in terms of families' expectations and in your business?

Wealth management has become much more international, which explains why we are based in Switzerland, the hub of the wealth management industry. And the financial environment has become significantly more complex.

At the same time, the family office concept has become institutionalized. The term is now very much a part of the wealth management landscape, and is attracting a great deal of interest.

However, as I mentioned earlier, this evolution is often accompanied by a very investment-centric approach. There is a lot of discussion about how to improve the investment offering for large estates.

The risk is to confuse the sophistication of the offer with the relevance of the advice.

The real challenge is to maintain a global approach to wealth management and support families in all their wealth-related issues, in a changing, internationalized, complex and increasingly regulated environment.

You have also contributed to structuring the profession at European level, notably through the ENFO network. What do you think the benchmark family office will look like in the next ten years?

I think we could see the emergence of two main types of player.

On the one hand, highly institutional structures, in B2B2C and B2C mode, offering large private clients sophisticated investment platforms and solutions close to those historically reserved for institutional investors. This model already exists in some Anglo-Saxon countries, with what might be called family investment offices.

On the other hand, more independent structures, often smaller in size (although their average size is likely to grow), will continue to play a more global, 360-degree wealth management role.

In fact, these two approaches could coexist, with family support structures being able to rely on certain investment platforms, while retaining their global orchestration role.

There's another factor that seems to me to be decisive for the years to come: the growing role of artificial intelligence. It will most likely be omnipresent in tomorrow's structures. We're already seeing this today: in the space of eighteen months, AI has enabled significant productivity gains, and will no doubt gradually replace certain functions.

But, paradoxically, I think this will make the human dimension even more essential. In an environment where technological tools will be widely accessible, the real differentiation will no longer come from access to information or tools, but from the ability to understand families, support them over time and maintain that relationship of trust that remains at the heart of the family office business.

Thefuture will tell how this balance evolves. For it is over time that this profession is judged.

This article has been automatically translated using Breeze, powered by DeepL.