Patrimony · Restricted access
Before this door opens, the law asks who you are.
The families and institutions this practice serves are not named here, and never will be.
Nothing on this website is an offer, a recommendation, or a view on the merits of any investment. To the extent that any part of it is an invitation or inducement to engage in investment activity within the meaning of section 21 of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000, it is directed only at the persons described below, and it must not be acted on by anyone else. The four paragraphs that follow are short, they are the law, and they are the reason this door is shut.
Under section 21 of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000, a firm that is not authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority must not communicate an invitation or inducement to engage in investment activity unless an exemption applies. Contravention is a criminal offence under section 25, and under section 30 an agreement that results from an unlawful communication may be unenforceable against the person who received it. Those consequences fall on the communicator. That is why this firm, and not you, polices this door.
This room relies on the exemptions in the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Financial Promotion) Order 2005. Article 19 admits investment professionals: authorised and exempt persons, and persons whose ordinary activities involve carrying on activity of the kind this room describes, for the purposes of a business. Article 49 admits high net worth companies, unincorporated associations and trusts that meet the thresholds the Order sets. A family office ordinarily enters through the vehicle it operates: where that company or trust meets the Article 49 thresholds, it may pass; a private individual does not pass by standing behind it. The conditions of both Articles require proper systems and procedures to keep this material from being acted on by anyone else, and this gate, together with the declarations it takes and the correction protocol beneath, is how those systems are kept.
Then this room is not directed at you. The protections the law builds for retail investors exist precisely so that material of this kind does not reach them. A declaration made in words you know to be untrue is a misrepresentation: English law allows the party who relied on it to set aside what followed from it, and this firm will use that right, including to refuse any dealing that began at this door. You would stand outside every protection the regime built for you, by your own hand. We ask you instead, plainly and with respect, to go no further.
The categories above are creatures of United Kingdom law. No foreign equivalence exists and none is claimed: your own country's law decides what may lawfully be put in front of you and what you may act upon, and a number of jurisdictions restrict their residents from acting on foreign material of this kind. By proceeding, you confirm that you may lawfully do so under the law of your place of residence. That confirmation, and that responsibility, are yours alone.
Now tell us who you are. We will hold you to it exactly as far as the law does.
Then we must ask you to stop here, and we ask it with respect.
The rules that close this room to private individuals exist for their protection, and we keep them to the letter. Nothing you have seen on this page is an invitation to engage in investment activity. If your family maintains an office or retains professional advisers, they are welcome to read this room and to write on your behalf. If you answered in error, write to the firm at its registered address, marked Patrimony, and say so: the correction is made in writing, not by a second click, because the record of who passed this gate is part of how the gate is kept.
By answering, you make a formal representation of your own legal status, on which this firm relies as its grounds for opening this room. The duty under section 21 is ours and it stays ours: your declaration does not move it, and was never asked in order to move it. What a false declaration does is different: it is a misrepresentation, yours to answer for, on which this firm will rely. The answer is held in your browser and transmitted nowhere: this site collects nothing.
Patrimony · The protocol
From first letter to the table.
Nothing in this practice happens to you unannounced. This page is the sequence, stage by stage, from the first letter to the room where terms are agreed, so that at every point you know what has happened, what happens next, and what would end the engagement instead. Families who know the sequence negotiate better inside it. That is why we publish it.
01 · The stages
In order
Eight stages. None skipped, for anyone.
- 01 The letter Two or three sentences: who you are, and what sits in front of you. Every approach is read personally. Most are declined, and declined quickly, which is a courtesy, not a slight.
- 02 The screen Capacity and jurisdiction, answered in writing before substance: who you are in law, where you stand, and who approached whom. Set out at where you live.
- 03 The room opens Confidentiality in writing, both directions, before anything of substance is exchanged. The wall applies from the first word: nothing of your affairs reaches the market, a competitor, a press desk or any surface of this firm, whatever the outcome. It has exactly two openings, and both belong to the law: what a court or a competent authority compels, and what the duties the law places on firms like ours require. Neither opening is ours to widen, and neither has anything to do with the market knowing your name.
- 04 The question, framed Your objective stated in one page, and tested against the terrain: the centre that suits it, the shape that carries it, the counterparties it will require. If the honest answer is that the question is not ready, we say so here, where it is cheap to hear.
- 05 The file Built with you, to be examined by an institution. What it contains, you have seen. What it claims, you can defend. Nothing reaches a third party before you have read every page that carries your name.
- 06 The approach One institution at a time, under seal, with your prior knowledge of exactly who. No circulation, no auction, no rumour of a family looking. The market never learns you were considering anything.
- 07 The table The joint meeting, then the institution's own process: its diligence, its classification of you, its own advice under its own conduct rules. Your solicitor beside you for terms. Described in full at the mandate.
- 08 Completion, and after The capital moves through regulated channels, never through ours. What follows, if you wish it, is the standing discipline of the development practice: independent eyes on what your capital became.
02 · Tempo, and exits
Pace
As fast as honesty allows. Never faster.
Stages close when their questions are answered, not when a calendar says so. Either side may end the engagement at any stage, in writing, with nobody the wiser: the wall outlives the engagement, whatever its outcome. And we say stop ourselves when stopping is the right counsel, because a firm that cannot say stop is not one a family should sit beside.