PCD Leeds Conference · Panel 3 · 3 March 2026 · Conference Report
Panel: Mark Brown (Private Banking Director, Union Bancaire Privée) · Anne Baggesen (Head of Business Development, Charterhouse Lombard) · Catherine French (Private Client Trust Lawyer, DQ Advocates) · Laura Clapton (Co-Founder, Consillia Legal) · Ellie Milner (Private Client Partner, Mills & Reeve) · Chair: Ken Chapman
The emotional architecture of succession
Ken Chapman opened the session with a nod to HBO's Succession — but while the assembled panel may have lacked the Roy family's dysfunction, the issues they discussed were no less consequential.
Mark Brown set the tone with an observation that drew immediate recognition from the room: succession planning advice is, in his experience, "probably 80% driven by emotion and 20% by the actual technical recommendation." No two families are alike, and what works on paper frequently meets friction when it encounters the reality of family dynamics, generational expectations, and a founder's reluctance to relinquish control.
"Quite often when you're going to be appointed as a trustee, you don't know about it until the end of the story."— Anne Baggesen, Charterhouse Lombard
Anne Baggesen — drawing on 25 years in the fiduciary industry — offered a perspective that cut to the heart of why that emotional dimension so often catches advisers off guard. By the time a trust structure is finally being implemented, the family has often already made significant decisions. The trustee, who should ideally have been involved from the outset, is left trying to understand a complex family dynamic under time pressure.
Baggesen was equally direct on what clients have in common, whatever their background: "Everybody wants harmony. They try to avoid conflict. They want to do it in the quickest, most cost-effective way — but one size fits all, it isn't." Ellie Milner echoed this, noting a broader shift in how families now approach the succession conversation — less as a decision made by parents and handed down, more as a family exercise in which adult children are actively involved in shaping the plan.
Milner also raised a more sobering driver: clients from racially minoritised backgrounds or communities feeling geopolitical vulnerability have been accelerating their estate planning in ways that go beyond tax. One client, she said, described the goal as creating "a running away fund for their children" — ensuring the next generation had independent access to funds if circumstances ever required a rapid departure. "Incredibly depressing that clients are having to think like that," she acknowledged, "but they're certainly not the only ones."
Trusts, offshore structures, and the trustee's view
Catherine French gave a candid assessment of the current trust landscape from her daily practice advising Isle of Man trust and corporate service providers. "We are seeing less and less trusts being established, I think, because of the tax changes in the UK," she said. The combination of the £325,000 nil rate band and the forthcoming limits on Business Property Relief has shifted the conditions that once made offshore structures a natural first port of call.
She was careful, however, not to overstate the decline. "Trusts are great for the right people" — while acknowledging that some clients simply do not want to relinquish control to a trustee, and that cultural attitudes to beneficial ownership vary considerably. The Isle of Man's statutory framework, she noted, remains a genuine strength, with its 1995 and 2015 Trust Acts making the Island's regime one of the most robust for asset protection, privacy, and succession planning. She also observed a growing use of foundations as an alternative, with privacy a major draw — there is no trust register on the Island.
Baggesen argued that trusts remain most powerful for ultra-high net worth families with genuinely complex cross-border lives: multiple assets in multiple jurisdictions, family members across different countries. "In those situations, probate and dying is quite complicated." The solution is familiar to practitioners — a trust sitting at the top of the structure, consolidating ownership across what might otherwise be a tangle of corporate entities across different jurisdictions.
On trusts versus family investment companies, Milner made the point that the choice is rarely binary: a trust holding shares in a family investment company can bring both structures together in a coherent family wealth vehicle, each serving a distinct purpose.
"Sometimes we get clients who say, it's okay, I've got a UK will — and I'm like, it doesn't cover the Isle of Man, so they die intestate."— Catherine French, DQ Advocates
French also raised a frequently overlooked practical issue: the gap between what clients believe their will covers and what it actually does. Her advice was unambiguous — clients with assets in multiple jurisdictions should have a will in each, drafted to local requirements. The practical difference is stark. She described obtaining a grant of probate on the Isle of Man in fifteen minutes from a locally drafted will, against year-long waits experienced during COVID for UK grants. Milner agreed, noting that documents tailored to each jurisdiction allow local processes — often much faster — to run independently.
Gifts, assets, and the question of timing
The panel ranged across the practicalities of asset transfer: what to gift, when, and in what form. Brown highlighted the importance of liquidity and usability in deciding which assets to pass on — illustrating the point with a ski chalet that elderly clients use less frequently, a more natural candidate for gifting than a primary residence where gift-with-reservation rules immediately complicate the picture.
Baggesen offered a distinct angle from the offshore practice perspective. In the fiduciary world, she noted, much of the work is reactive: "We see more of the post-death transfers. The implementation is our bag of things." The implication was clear: the earlier a trustee is brought into the succession conversation, the better the outcome for everyone.
Clapton noted a clear upstream trend: more clients arriving with pre-acquired intergenerational wealth and needing advice on how to protect it before marriage — a direct consequence of the accelerated succession planning triggered by the October 2024 Budget. Milner identified business assets as a particularly significant category right now, with the inheritance tax changes prompting realistic conversations about continuity: "Is there anyone who is actually going to take this over?"
Nuptial agreements: from uncomfortable conversation to standard practice
Laura Clapton's contribution brought one of the session's most practically useful discussions. She described the growing volume of clients arriving with intergenerational wealth in the context of marriage planning, and the critical importance of nuptial agreements in ring-fencing non-matrimonial assets before they become matrimonialised through the way they are used within a relationship.
The Supreme Court's landmark 2025 decision in Standish formalised the principle of matrimonialisation: assets that are gifts or inheritance can become part of the matrimonial pot if treated as shared within the marriage. Since the Supreme Court's 2010 Radmacher ruling, properly constructed nuptial agreements have been enforced, and contested cases have become rare.
"We're acting for a lot more trustees who are saying, if a prenup is not entered into, then that beneficiary may no longer be a beneficiary."— Catherine French, DQ Advocates
French noted that the conversation around prenuptial agreements is one she is having more and more frequently, reflecting a broader generational shift in willingness to discuss these issues openly, and an acknowledgement that divorce — however unwelcome — is a reality that succession planning must anticipate. The downstream risk is not abstract: a spouse can indirectly benefit from a trust if a beneficiary's marriage is not appropriately structured.
Milner described how the requirement for nuptial agreements can be built directly into the articles of association of a family investment company, making the requirement structural rather than personal. "It's not about whether we like your soon-to-be spouse. It's just how we do it as a family." Brown's endorsement was equally clear: Americans have long normalised pre- and post-nuptial agreements, and the private client profession in the UK is catching up.
Philanthropy and the next generation
The panel closed with a discussion of philanthropy. Baggesen noted that the landscape has changed significantly: "A lot of the private banks will have a specialist team that deals with philanthropy, and that's indicative of the fact that families — ultra-high net worth families — are thinking about it a lot more." The questions being asked are not just about the right charitable vehicle, but about how to involve the next generation: what structures are appropriate, whether professional trustees or family members should sit on them, and how the capital is invested to create lasting value.
Brown drew a useful distinction between giving to charity and genuine philanthropy — the former a direct donation, the latter an ongoing commitment to a cause over time. For clients donating 10% of their estate to charity, the inheritance tax rate on the remainder reduces from 40% to 36%, a meaningful incentive, though rarely the primary driver. Milner was similarly clear: "Tax is usually just a nice-to-have alongside the values."
It was, in many respects, the session's defining note — a reminder that at the heart of every succession plan, underneath the structures, the reliefs, and the planning horizons, lies a family and what it cares about.
