The Withers Consulting Group (WCG) will go live on 2 April, and will be headed up by Kenneth McCracken in the UK, and Amelia Renkert-Thomas in the US, Withers said in a statement released yesterday.
Withers has offices in several of the world’s major international financial centres, including New York, London, Hong Kong, Singapore, Zurich, Geneva and the British Virgin Islands, and dates back more than 100 years. In London its offices are opposite the Old Bailey.
McCracken and Amelia Renkert-Thomas are both active in the area of family enterprise consulting, and have been working together on international projects since 2009. Renkert-Thomas is a former Withers partner, and ran her family’s fifth generation manufacturing firm from 1990 to 2002, while McCracken founded an international consulting think tank known as Family Business Solutions, with which Renkert-Thomas has also been associated.
In launching WCG, Withers becomes the latest law firm to add an in-house team of non-legal experts to look after existing clients in areas unrelated to law, such as tax and/or financial advice.
In a statement announcing the new operation, Withers said it had launched it in response to a growing number of queries from clients, who have sought the company’s advice “on a range of non-legal, as well as legal, issues”.
Given that looking after families, entrepreneurs and their businesses was already a focus of Withers’s legal practice, “the launch of consulting services is a logical evolution of our offering”.
“Providing this kind of strategic advice goes to the very core of what families and entrepreneurs want to do, both now and in the future,” Withers added.
“The demand for this type of advice is currently underserviced in the market.”
Typical questions
Typical questions WCG will help its clients with, Withers said, would include “how do we protect and share our family wealth – fairly?” and “How do we make sure our family and business values are passed on?”
WCG will not, however, provide any “investment, legal, tax, compliance, financial risk management or concierge advice to
clients”; anyone seeking such services will, Withers said, be referred on to “high quality advisers”.
