We have advised five family offices in South Asia on liquidity restructuring in the last 90 days. Three patterns are repeating.
Pattern one — Generation 2 wants optionality. The patriarch built durable operating businesses; Generation 2 wants the option to redeploy into venture, public markets, or international real estate. That requires extracting cashflow without breaking the operating businesses.
Pattern two — governance has not kept up. Most families we see still operate under informal coordination. Liquidity events surface every weakness in that arrangement. The solution is unglamorous: codified investment committee, written delegation, dispute-resolution clause.
Pattern three — taxation arbitrage is a smaller lever than people think. The bigger lever is structure. Holding-company design and intra-family lending lines do more work than offshore wrappers in our region.