Spotlight On...
Trusts & Fiduciary A
SPOTLIGHT ON... Andreas Athinodorou, Aspen Trust Group
“The trust and fiduciary industry in this era of regulation, transparency, anti-terrorism and anti-money laundering is under a magnifying glass. It is an industry that provides a level of protection and an additional level of privacy in a time when talking about privacy is considered to be blasphemous.”
ndreas Athinodorou is a co-founder of Aspen Trust Group and a qualified Chartered Accountant from the UK. Over the last 20 years, Andreas has
built an expertise in international tax planning for corporate and private wealth clients.
Q
What more can you tell us about Aspen Trust Group?
We are a multi-disciplinary team that aims at offering a complete range of services, kind of a one-stop-shop for corporate and private wealth clients. We offer advice, implementation and on- going management of our solutions, in Cyprus and in about 20 other jurisdictions.
The company was created as a spin-off of one of the top 4 accounting firms. We could see that there was a need for a stand-alone service provider that could offer these one-stop-shop solutions, and within the environment of trust and fiduciary business we wanted to provide the level of service that one expects to receive in a private bank or in a top 4 accounting firm.
Our outlook is to offer solid advice and flexible solutions to our clients. So effectively we look at each case with a holistic approach, which is very important for private wealth clients. Because of the fact that the circumstances of each family are completely different it is one of those services in which you cannot really use one size fits all – approach.
76
www.finance-monthly.com Q
What are the different types of Trusts, and how can they be
beneficial?
The key principal behind a Trust is that the minute the settlor places a property into a trust, the legal ownership of the property changes from the settlor to the trustee. The trustee is looking after the property on behalf of the trust. Beyond this basic principle we can develop many variations of trusts, based on the trust deed we choose. The trust deed addresses the questions of: Who is the beneficiary and the protector, if it exists? Who is the settlor? What are the parameters under which the trust will give the benefits of assets of the trust to the beneficiaries? And so forth. So the minute we get the property suitably settled into a trust, we can play with many variables within the type of trust we can have.
❝
the hands of the trustee. This effectively creates a cut-off point of the ownership of the assets and beyond, it allows the settlor to express his wishes on what the trustee will do with the assets at a future point in time. As a tool this can be used as a protection, in the case of litigation or in the case of a divorce –or anything that potentially could threaten the ownership of the assets. Or it can be used for determining the benefit of enjoying the ownership of the assets. A Trust can be used for tax planning purposes, to defer or properly tax plan the liabilities of the owners of the assets, or the people that enjoy the benefits of the assets. It can be used for planning the use of the benefits across generations, for example, passing the assets properly from one generation to another, or skipping a generation. And it can actually be used as a way insuring that in order to use the assets, certain parameters are met by the beneficiaries.
The main benefit of a Trust arises from the fact that the settlor separates the ownership of the assets from himself or herself and places them in
A Trust can be used for tax planning purposes, to defer or properly tax plan the liabilities of the owners of the assets, or the people that enjoy the benefits of the assets.
Trusts are used mainly by families and private wealth individuals, as opposed to corporate clients. Then again, even companies belong to
❝
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90