Case Studies

Family Office

Building Investment Governance for a Single-Family Office

Overview

A newly formalised single-family office in the UAE had moved from informal, founder-driven investing to a more structured approach with external managers, co-investors and club deals. The family wanted to maintain flexibility while avoiding conflicts, misunderstandings with advisors, and fragmented records.

Marensa Advisory was engaged to design a proportionate investment governance framework covering mandates, decision-making, documentation and conflicts.

Client profile

Single-family office representing a first-generation entrepreneur
Assets across real estate, private equity, public markets and venture deals
Mix of external managers, direct deals and co-investments with partners
Small internal team with heavy reliance on external advisors

Key challenges

Unwritten rules
The founder had clear views on risk, leverage and concentration, but these were not documented. Advisors and managers often worked from verbal instructions.
Inconsistent documentation
Some deals were well documented; others rested on term sheets and emails. It was difficult to reconstruct the history of decisions or rationales months later.
Conflicts and co-investment complexity
Situations involving co-investors, “friends & family” and advisory relationships created potential conflicts, but there was no explicit framework for handling them.
Succession and continuity concerns
The next generation was starting to engage and wanted more transparency and clarity around the overall portfolio and decision-making process.

Marensa’s approach

1. Clarifying objectives and risk appetite

We ran structured discussions with the founder and key family members to capture:

Overall wealth objectives (preservation vs. growth vs. impact)
Comfort with leverage, illiquidity and concentration
Time horizons for different asset buckets
Views on reputational risk and sectors to avoid

We turned this into a Family Office Investment Charter, written in plain language and supported by appendices where needed.

2. Mandates and role definition

We helped the family define:

Core portfolios (e.g. long-term public, opportunistic, venture, real estate)
Mandates for external managers and internal direct investing
Decision thresholds and who needed to approve what (e.g. ticket sizes, leverage, related-party elements)

We also clarified the roles of external advisors vs. internal staff vs. family members in originating, assessing and executing deals.

3. Deal process & documentation

To avoid bureaucracy, we designed a four-step process for direct and co-investment deals:

Brief investment note (1–2 pages)
Due diligence summary, including key risks and mitigants
Decision memo with approvals and any conditions
Closing pack and post-closing actions

We created templates for each step and suggested where they should be stored and how they should be indexed, so that future reviews could easily find the full picture.

4. Conflicts and co-investment framework

We introduced a simple conflicts policy:

Defined potential conflict scenarios (related parties, advisory roles, fee arrangements, co-investors)
Set expectations on who must be told what, and when
Documented how conflicted individuals should recuse themselves or seek consent

For co-investments, we outlined principles on information sharing, governance rights, alignment of interests and exit expectations.

5. Reporting and next-generation visibility

Finally, we worked with the family office’s accountant and external custodian to design a consolidated reporting pack:

Overall asset allocation, with simple visuals
Deal-level summaries for private and illiquid assets
Flags for concentration, liquidity and covenant risks
Plain-language commentary that could be shared with the next generation

Outcomes

Within several months:

The family had a clear, written investment charter that captured the founder’s philosophy while allowing for evolution.
External managers and advisors operated within clearer mandates, reducing misunderstandings and “advice drift”.
Deal files were complete and structured, allowing quick retrieval of rationales and terms.
The next generation gained a better understanding of the portfolio and the decision-making process, supporting succession objectives.

Why it matters

Family offices often sit between private and institutional worlds: too complex for purely informal processes, but wary of institutional bureaucracy. We were able to show how proportionate governance can preserve flexibility while protecting relationships, reputation and long-term wealth.