Corporate Asset Restructuring for Sharia-Compliant Succession Planning

A prominent Saudi Arabian family, which owns a large trading group operating throughout the GCC and Europe. The family group includes two wives who each have children with the patriarch.

The patriarch held the family’s assets in his own name, and these were situated in the UK, the US and Europe. He was concerned that no provision had been made for succession planning and wished to create an effective structure for passing on both the private wealth and family business, while adhering to Shari’a inheritance principles.

We created a structure that includes a foundation acting as a privately owned foundation to underlying Jersey Law trusts, and which in turn provides the family with a greater degree of control and involvement in the trustee decision-making process. Each trust holds a proportion of the shares in the European arm of the family trading business in accordance with Shari’a principles. Each trust also holds the shares of their own Jersey-registered asset and investment holding vehicles to cater for personal investments.

The assets of the family are held within one organised structure to ensure that they are preserved and enhanced for the benefit of future generations and that they will be passed on in accordance Shari’a principles.