Liechtenstein: Wealth Management

Private wealth is changing faster than many legal structures were designed to accommodate, because internationally mobile families, founders, investors, family offices and philanthropists are now expected to reconcile succession planning, asset preservation, tax transparency, family governance, bank compliance, reporting duties, charitable impact, digital assets and reputational risk...

Liechtenstein has long occupied a distinctive position in European and international private wealth structuring, because its trust, unlike many civil law instruments that merely approximate fiduciary ownership or contractual asset administration, is embedded in the Persons and Companies Act (PGR) as a flexible, statutory, internationally recognisable legal form which, while historically inspired by the Anglo-Saxon trust tradition, has developed into a characteristically Liechtenstein solution for asset protection, succession planning, family governance, philanthropy and cross-border wealth continuity.

On 7 February 2012, Liechtenstein and the UK initialled a Double Taxation Agreement (DTA) in Vaduz and also extended operation of the sole disclosure programme currently in place, the Liechtenstein Disclosure Facility (LDF), by a further year up to 2016.