New Book Explores Strategies to Help Wealthy Families Maintain Their Wealth and Secure Their Legacies

A new book published by Wiley and Bloomberg Press titled More Than Money: A Guide to Sustaining Wealth and Preserving the Family explores the strategic tools that wealthy families and their advisors can use to help maintain wealth, preserve their legacies and most importantly keep the extended family unit intact. Authored by Michael Cole, president of Ascent Private Capital Management of U.S. Bank, which serves ultra-high-net-worth clients with $75 million or more in net worth, this book is the culmination of Cole’s more than 30 years of experience working with wealthy families and the insights and experiences he has gleaned on how wealthy families can best preserve their legacies.

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More Than Money, authored by Michael Cole, president of Ascent Private Capital Management (Photo: Business Wire)

Traditional wealth management firms typically concern themselves only with offering services like investment management, tax planning, estate planning, and cash flow management. However, the reason most family fortunes evaporate over time is because the family communicates poorly, lacks trust, has divergent visions, and does not prepare succeeding generations to sustain the hard-won resources.

“Nearly two-thirds of family wealth is lost by the third generation… not because of poor investment strategy, but because of failures in trust and communication between family members,” Cole explains. “I wrote this book to share the strategies that wealthy families can employ to help ensure that their wealth has the long-term impact they desire, and that the family bond is stronger in the end. I, and all of us at Ascent, truly believe that wealth is more than money.”

Wealthy families face unique challenges, including multiple generations involved with a family business or sharing the resources resulting from the sale of a business, as well as a multitude of legal entities, passive investments, operating businesses, interests, viewpoints, and opinions. Confronted with this complexity, this enlightening and practical book takes the reader step-by-step through the conversations that should happen to determine how to manage the family enterprise and resources, the roles each family member should play, how various family groups can best communicate with each other, and more. Representative examples culled from actual family scenarios bring concepts to life in illustrative case studies, including a model of a firm and family that got it right.

Specifically, More than Money provides wealthy families and their advisors with guidance on how to:

• Draft a shared family vision and mission, complete with guiding questions to cover key details.
• Implement dependable strategies for governance, risk management, education, stewardship, family leadership, and communication.
• Properly balance strategic and tactical planning to generate the most wealth impact for the family.
• Earn a reputation for making wealth last by knowing it takes more than money to keep families affluent.

“Michael gives the wealth owner a comprehensive tour of the challenges that every family faces. Think of this as a guidebook for learning how to address the impact of wealth on the family. His examples are unique but universal in the lessons they convey, and the questions he presents in every chapter are valuable for fortunate families who contemplate the purpose for their wealth. He helps us understand what will make wealth a source of satisfaction, and not a source of stress,” said Sara Hamilton, founder and CEO of the Family Office Exchange.

More than Money is available on Amazon and other online retailers and through the Wiley website.

About U.S. Bancorp
Minneapolis-based U.S. Bancorp (NYSE: USB), with $450 billion in assets as of March 31, 2017, is the parent company of U.S. Bank National Association, the fifth largest commercial bank in the United States. The Company operates 3,091 banking offices in 25 states and 4,838 ATMs and provides a comprehensive line of banking, investment, mortgage, trust and payment services products to consumers, businesses and institutions. Visit U.S. Bancorp on the web at www.usbank.com.

About Ascent Private Capital Management of U.S. Bank
Ascent Private Capital Management serves individuals and multigenerational families with significant resources who aspire to make an impact with their wealth. Clients can expect highly personalized advisory services that combine traditional wealth planning offerings with cutting-edge wealth impact planning and communication tools. For more information, visit www.ascent.usbank.com.

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