A look back at the most read stories on eprivateclient this week....
Monday
Turcan Connell - winner of the Private Client Law Firm (Boutique) category at the 2022 eprivateclient Excellence Awards - focused on “evolution, not revolution” as part of its success – its chairman Alexander Garden told eprivateclient.
For Turcan Connell, succession planning has been a key driver for the firm to evolve, Mr Garden said.
House prices in the countryside started to fall over the last year, having recorded growth since the pandemic in 2019, according to estate agent comparison site GetAgent.co.uk.
Its research revealed a countryside property purchase from a sample of 25 rural towns increased £323,603 in the current market, up nine percent compared to the pre-pandemic market.
Tuesday
The “new normal” of working from home could be costly for the nation, according to property maintenance solution provider Help me Fix.
It said the increased use of household appliances reduces their lifespan, leading to a strain on household finances to replace them, as well as the cost to the environment when it comes to disposing them.
A letter of wishes is a tool used by the settlor of a trust to guide the trustees as to how they would like the trust to be administered. Although this can be tremendously helpful to a trustee, it can also become a source of tension.
Imagine the following scenario: A settlor establishes a trust with a nominal sum of money. They then prepare a letter of wishes stating that one quarter of the trust fund is for their son and three quarters is for their daughter on the basis that the daughter is involved in running the family business.
Wednesday
IQ-EQ appointed Shaun Geils as global head of insurance, a newly created position supporting IQ-EQ’s extended service offering.
Mr Geils first joined IQ-EQ in 2015 in Mauritius to establish a unit servicing third party insurance, funds, private wealth and corporate clients. He then took on additional responsibility to implement the group’s shared services operating model in Mauritius and helped to grow the team from its inception, which now has over 275 staff, servicing external clients, as well as 18 global IQ-EQ offices in Asia, Europe, UK and Channel Islands, Caribbean, Africa and United States.
HMRC planned to raise interest rates on late tax bills to 4.25 percent on the 23 August, a level not seen since January 2009.
A further increase on interest paid to HMRC for late payment of taxes could hit taxpayers who are not up-to-date and their bills could grow very quickly, according to tax and advisory firm Blick Rothenberg.
Thursday
The amount of tax that HMRC believes was underpaid by wealthy individuals relating to trusts jumped by 32 percent in the past year, according to international law firm RPC
HMRC claimed the amount owed now is £80.8 million, up from £61 million the previous year.
Priti Patel, the UK Home Secretary, appointed Graeme Biggar CBE as director general of the National Crime Agency (NCA).
Mr Biggar has led the NCA on an interim basis since October 2021 and has now been appointed on a five year term.
Friday
The Channel Islands’ relationship with the financial services industry goes back a long way. So much so that the two are often synonymous; the industry and local island life are closely intertwined.
It was this thinking that drove Pershing, a long-established custody and back-office provider to the wealth industry in the UK and Ireland, to establish a subsidiary business in Jersey in 2011 to support the offshore wealth industry.
Overall revenues at PwC UK - including revenues for the UK and Middle East - grew 12 percent to £5 billion for the year ended 30 June 2022, up from growth of just two percent growth in FY2021.
The Big Four firm said the two percent growth last year was due to activity being “initially frozen” due to the pandemic but rebounding in the second half.