About Trusted Governance

  • Trusted Governance is a Zurich-based practice that helps families who share wealth, a business, or both to agree on how they make decisions together: who decides what, how the next generation is brought in, what happens when a founder steps back, and how disagreements are handled before they harden. The result is usually a set of agreements the family has written itself, and a rhythm for keeping them alive.

    We are not a law firm, a trustee, or an asset manager. Our work sits alongside those advisors and makes their structures easier to live with, because the family behind the structure has agreed on how it wants to operate.

  • Laura Nanette Gambineri-Giese and Riccardo Gambineri, a daughter and father who have worked together in the same firm for more than a decade. Both hold a Master of Laws (LL.M.) and the TEP designation from STEP, the international body for trust and estate practitioners, and both have spent their careers with international families and their advisors. That combination, professional training and lived experience of a family working together, is the basis of the practice.

  • We are based in Kloten, on the edge of Zurich, a few minutes from Zurich Airport. Almost all of our work is international. The families we work with are spread across Europe, the United States, the United Kingdom and Asia, often with members in several countries at once and with structures in more than one jurisdiction. Where a family has ties to the United States, the United Kingdom and Switzerland at the same time, we know that terrain particularly well, and we understand what it does to the conversation, which is different from providing tax advice.

    A common pattern is that the family office, trustee or advisor sits in Switzerland and the family lives elsewhere. We work comfortably in that setup. We work in English and German, in person and remotely; family sessions happen wherever the family can gather, and individual conversations often happen by video. Distance has never been the obstacle. Getting everyone into the same conversation is.

  • Families with meaningful shared wealth, typically across two or more generations, and often with a family business, a family office, or a trust structure in the picture. Some come to us before a transition, some in the middle of one, and some after something has already gone wrong.

    We also work with the advisors around those families: lawyers, trustees, private bankers, and family office executives who recognize that the technical plan is sound but the family is not yet aligned behind it.

  • Three reasons families give us. Our fees are not tied to your assets, so there is nothing else we are there to sell. We do not begin until we have spoken with each family member individually, so the work reflects the whole family rather than the person who made the call. And we have lived inside a family enterprise ourselves, so we know what it feels like from the inside, not only from the case studies.

    We are also clear about our limits, which is why we work alongside your lawyers, trustees, and bankers rather than in place of them.

  • No. We understand the structures families use, but we do not act as your lawyers or tax advisors, and nothing in our work should be read as legal or tax advice. Where a decision has legal or tax consequences, we work with your counsel or help you find the right one.

  • With a conversation. Write to us or call, tell us what has prompted you to look, and we will tell you plainly whether we think we can help. There is no obligation on either side after that first exchange.

Our Services

  • Four things, in practice. Helping a family write its own constitution or charter. Setting up and supporting a family council or family assembly. Preparing the next generation for ownership and leadership, and preparing the senior generation to hand it over. And working through a specific transition, such as a succession, a sale of the business, or a dispute that has already begun.

    Every engagement is shaped around the family and the question in front of it. We do not work from templates.

  • It starts with a conversation with whoever reaches out, to understand what prompted the call and whether we are the right people. If we are, we then speak with each family member individually and in confidence. Those conversations are where the real picture emerges: what people are worried about, what they have never said, and where they agree without knowing it.

    From there we bring the family together for working sessions. The number and rhythm depend on the family and the question. The output is whatever the family needs to move forward: a constitution, a council, a succession plan the next generation actually accepts, or sometimes a clean decision to do things separately. We then help the family build a rhythm so that the agreements do not sit in a drawer.

  • Earlier than most families expect, and more gradually than most families do it. The pattern that works is a ladder: responsibilities that grow in steps, information that is shared by stage rather than all at once or never, and real decisions to make before real ownership arrives. Leadership in a family enterprise is not one role, and part of the work is helping the rising generation find the role that fits, which may be governance, stewardship, or philanthropy rather than running the operating business.

    The other half of the work is with the senior generation. Preparing successors means being prepared to let them decide, and to let them decide differently. That is often the harder conversation.

  • Closely, and by design. Your lawyer, trustee, banker, or family office executive knows the structure; we work on the family's ability to operate within it. Where a family's agreements need to be reflected in legal documents, we work with counsel to make sure the two are consistent. Where an advisor senses that the plan is technically complete but the family is not behind it, they often bring us in, and we regard that as the ideal starting point.

    We do not compete with your advisors for the relationship. Our engagement has a beginning and an end.

  • It depends on the question. Setting up a family council or drafting a constitution with a family that is broadly aligned is usually a matter of months, with a handful of family sessions and the individual conversations in between. Working through a contested succession or a frayed relationship takes longer, because trust is rebuilt through repetition rather than in a single meeting. We will give you an honest estimate after the first conversation, and we will tell you if we think the timing is wrong.

  • Individual conversations are confidential. What a family member tells us in private is not repeated to the rest of the family unless they choose to say it themselves. We bring themes into the room, not attributions. That is what makes the individual conversations honest, and it is the reason the family sessions work.

  • Before it is urgent. The best moments are the ones that feel unremarkable: a founder in good health thinking about the next decade, a child finishing their education, a family office being set up, a first grandchild. Families also come to us at sharper moments, such as a sale of the business, a death, a divorce, or a dispute already in motion, and the work is still possible then. It is simply harder, and the options are fewer.

    If you are wondering whether it is too early, it is probably the right time.

Family Governance, in Plain Terms

  • It is the set of agreements a family makes about how it makes decisions together. Who has a say, on what, and how. How information is shared. How new members and the next generation come in. What happens when people disagree.

    Every family already has governance; in most, it is unwritten and lives in the habits of one or two people. The work is to make it explicit while those people are still in the room, so that it does not have to be reconstructed under pressure later.

  • A family constitution (sometimes called a family charter) is a document the family writes for itself. The strongest ones are short and specific. They typically cover: why the family holds wealth together and what it is for; who counts as family for the purposes of the agreement, including how spouses and partners are treated; the difference between being an owner, working in the business, and being a family member, and what each role entitles you to; which forums make which decisions, such as a family council, a family assembly, or a board; the rules for family members who want to work in the business, and for those who want to leave it; principles for distributions and liquidity; how information is shared and with whom; how disagreements are handled; how the next generation is prepared; and how the constitution itself can be changed.

    Where families go wrong is in copying a template. A document the family did not write does not change how the family behaves.

  • Usually not on its own. It is a statement of how the family intends to behave, and its force comes from the fact that the family wrote and agreed to it. The enforceable parts live in shareholder agreements, trust deeds, articles of association, and wills, and the constitution has to be consistent with them. A good constitution tells your lawyers what the family wants; the legal documents then make it stick. If you are unsure which parts of yours are binding, ask your counsel.

  • A family council is a standing forum where the family, as distinct from the business or the trustees, discusses and decides the matters that belong to it. Setting one up means answering a small number of practical questions honestly: who sits on it, and how the different branches and generations are represented; what it decides and what it only advises on; how it relates to the board, the trustees, or the family office; how often it meets and who chairs it; and how members join and leave.

    We usually recommend starting smaller than feels satisfying. The first meeting is about how the family wants to meet, not about the hardest question on the table. A council that meets three times and is still talking has already done more than most.

  • The family assembly is everyone: all family members, usually meeting once a year, to be informed and to feel part of the whole. The family council is a smaller, representative group that meets more often and does the actual work on behalf of the family. The board governs the business or the holding company and answers to the owners, some of whom may be family. Keeping these three apart is one of the most useful things a family can do, because most conflict comes from a business decision being made at the dinner table or a family matter being decided in the boardroom.

  • Mostly by talking about it before it happens, and by separating the decision from the person. Families that manage transitions well tend to have three things in place: a shared understanding of what fair means to them, which is not always equal; a process for making decisions that everyone accepts as legitimate even when they disagree with the outcome; and a habit of meeting that was formed before anything was at stake. Families that struggle usually have a plan that was made for them rather than with them, and a first conversation about it that happens at the funeral.

  • A family office is an organization: the staff and structure that manage a family's investments, administration, and often its philanthropy. Family governance is the set of agreements about how the family decides. A family office can exist without governance, and often does, which is when family office executives find themselves refereeing between siblings. Governance without a family office is common too, especially in families whose wealth is concentrated in an operating business. The two work best together, with the family's agreements telling the office what it is there to serve.

  • More often than once a year and less often than feels burdensome. Many families settle on a full assembly once a year and council meetings quarterly, with individual conversations in between. The rhythm matters more than the frequency. A meeting that always happens, with a known agenda and a known chair, does more for trust than an occasional grand gathering.

  • When there is something to share and more than one person with a stake in it. In practice that means well before the founder plans to step back, and ideally while the next generation is still forming its view of the family and its wealth. The earlier the conversation, the more it is about design and the less it is about repair.

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