Setting Up a Family Office in ADGM: A Practical Guide

Family offices arrive with different priorities than most clients. The conversation is rarely about saving a few dirhams — it's about privacy, control, succession, and a framework the family can trust across generations. ADGM answers those well, which is why we see a steady flow of them. Here's the practical picture.

Why ADGM appeals to families

English common law gives families a system their advisers worldwide already understand, with established concepts for trusts, foundations and wealth structuring; the jurisdiction offers genuine privacy and robust governance; and the FSRA and ADGM Courts provide the institutional stability that matters when you're planning across decades.

The ADGM Foundation — the centrepiece

Established under the Foundations Regulations 2017, an ADGM Foundation is a legal entity with its own personality and no shareholders, blending features of a civil-law foundation and a common-law trust. A council carries out the foundation's objects and manages its assets under a charter and by-laws; a guardian is optional while the founder is alive and compulsory afterwards. For succession, the charter and by-laws set binding instructions for how assets pass across generations — without probate or external court intervention — and the structure ring-fences assets from claims such as divorce, litigation or creditors (provided it isn't used for fraud).

The wider structure

Family offices typically combine elements — a foundation for holding and succession, SPVs for specific assets or investments, sometimes a regulated entity if the office manages investments. A multi-family office serving several families is lightly regulated by the FSRA under a Category 4 licence (base capital in the region of USD 50,000 under the current rulebook). The office requirement falls on the operating layer, not the pure holding vehicles.

The premises question

Where the family office operates — staff, meetings, day-to-day affairs — a private office is almost always the right answer; privacy and discretion are the point. An enclosed, professional space for confidential conversations and sensitive documents is what a family office should have. On Al Reem that's delivered with the full ADGM framework at a fraction of the Al Maryah cost, leaving more capital working rather than tied up in rent.

Related: holding companies, how SPVs work, and entity types.

Talk to MY Coworking

Discreet private office options for family offices — the privacy and substance this work demands, with the full ADGM framework, at a sensible Al Reem cost. Let us talk in confidence.

We're on Al Reem Island — 2312 Addax Tower, City of Lights, Abu Dhabi. Email contact@mycoworking.ae to book a tour or get a same-day quote.