For high-net-worth individuals and family offices, protecting assets means more than a single trust deed. We structure Malta trusts, DIFC and ADGM foundations, and family office frameworks built to withstand the risks that come with holding assets across multiple jurisdictions.

For high-net-worth individuals and family offices, protecting assets means considerably more than a single trust deed. Harry Reynolds and our private wealth team structure Malta trusts, DIFC and ADGM foundations, and family office frameworks built specifically to withstand the risks that come with holding assets across multiple jurisdictions at once.

Genuine asset protection is never about hiding wealth; it's about structuring it so that legitimate business, family, and succession objectives are actually achieved, with appropriate separation between personal and business risk, and appropriate governance over how wealth is managed and eventually transferred to the next generation.

This page covers how we approach wealth and asset protection structuring across the Malta-UAE corridor, and the questions we're asked most frequently by families and family offices considering these structures.

Malta Trusts And Private Foundations

Malta offers both trust and foundation structures, giving clients genuine flexibility to choose whichever vehicle better suits their objectives and, in some cases, their own legal background, since foundations tend to feel more familiar to clients from civil law traditions while trusts feel more familiar to those from common law backgrounds. We advise on which structure genuinely fits a client's circumstances rather than defaulting to whichever is more common in our own practice.

Malta trust law is well established and internationally recognised, giving settlors confidence that a properly constituted Malta trust will be respected both locally and internationally, an important consideration for families whose assets and beneficiaries span multiple countries.

DIFC And ADGM Foundations

The DIFC and ADGM each offer their own foundation regimes, built on common law principles and increasingly popular among Gulf-based and international families specifically because they combine the asset-holding and succession benefits of a traditional trust or foundation with a genuinely familiar, English-language common law governing framework and dispute resolution infrastructure.

We structure DIFC and ADGM foundations for clients whose wealth or family base sits primarily in the UAE, and regularly combine these with a Malta trust or company where a client's structure genuinely needs to span both jurisdictions rather than sit entirely within one.

Family Office Establishment And Governance

For families reaching a scale where informal wealth management is no longer sufficient, we help establish a proper family office structure, whether a single-family office dedicated entirely to one family's affairs or participation in a multi-family office arrangement, with the governance, investment mandate, and succession planning that structure requires to function effectively over the long term.

Asset Protection Structuring

We structure holding arrangements that create genuine, legally recognised separation between different categories of risk, personal assets separated from business risk, and different business lines separated from each other, so that a problem in one area of a client's affairs doesn't automatically expose everything else they hold.

Frequently Asked Questions