A Billion Dollar Balancing Act

How ultra-rich stay rich; their world of trusts, private bankers and offshore destinations.

- Devika Singh & Aprajita Sharma

A ZERO CAN MAKE all the difference. It turns thousands to lakhs and lakhs to crores. But for the uber-rich it is ‘just another zero’. On a humid Saturday afternoon in Gurgaon, a private banker-turned-entrepreneur who runs a family office relates to the writers an incident about a family which sold off one of their businesses and grew their financial assets of 100 crore to 1,000 crore. When they approached him to explore exciting investment avenues, he advised, “Your track record has been quite good for the last five years, why change it now? Follow the simple philosophy that just one zero has been added.”

Another wealth manager, a Bollywood buff, when quizzed about ultra high net worth individuals (HNIs) losing money in commercial paper (CP) of debt-ridden IL&FS, brushes off the question. Without missing a beat, he quotes a popular Hindi movie dialogue: “Bade bade deshon me chhoti chhoti batein hoti rehti hain.” Two days later, the Sensex slumped 1,500 points on account of liquidity crunch post-ILF&S firesale.

Money begets money, but not without some assistance. Money management for ‘the haves’ of the world means preserving their personal or family wealth and ensuring that it multiplies. As most nations tax the rich, this often involves a lot of balancing, finding loopholes and at times dodging taxes. A tight-knit group of professionals — from lawyers, chartered accountants (CAs) to wealth managers — help the ultra-rich stay rich.

In the 1960s and ‘70s there were ‘munshis’ to assist the rich with financial matters. Hindi movies from that era often had a subservient, bespectacled munimji with a black pouch to help the seth in money matters. Things changed with liberalisation. Lawyers and CAs became the new confidants of rich families. Now, it is private bankers and wealth managers.