By Agreus Co-Founder Tayyab Mohamed

Last year, Agreus took on a mandate that led us down an interesting journey.

As a recruitment and consulting firm working closely with Family Offices, I am used to highly sensitive environments. As a firm, we specialise in executive search, advise on compensation and governance structures, and are very familiar with the delicate dynamics that come with serving ultra-high-net-worth families. As advisors, trust is the foundation of everything we do.

But this was different.

We were approached by a law firm serving as the defence attorneys of an elder abuse victim, a UHNW individual who had been taken advantage of by the closest trusted advisor, someone who had worked closely with him for years. The trusted advisor had positioned themselves not just as a professional, but as a confidant. The law firm asked us to serve as an expert witness in court, addressing questions around Family Offices, best practices, and compensation strategies of professionals in Family Offices.

To be honest, I hesitated at first. I have conducted countless compensation consulting projects over the years with Family Offices all over the world, and I work with this data day to day. I have a very deep understanding of how advisors, executives, investment professionals, and senior leaders within Family Offices are typically remunerated. But stepping into a courtroom, being deposed, examined, cross-examined, and having our data scrutinized and challenged, almost felt like unknown territory and really made me think.

Was this beyond our scope? I asked myself that question more than once. Then I took a step back and looked at what the legal team was truly asking for. They didn’t need legal strategists or financial forensic experts. What they needed was clarity and benchmarked information, grounded in real-world market data.

For over 15 years, we have built proprietary compensation data through placing professionals in some of the most intimate and trusted environments in the world: Family Offices. We understand how these roles are structured. We know what reasonable pay looks like. We know what is aligned with market practice, and what is not.

The advisor who had earned the client’s trust had been taking compensation that far exceeded reasonable market standards. Beyond siphoning client funds, he was charging a form of LTIP that essentially ate into the client’s revenues rather than sharing in the profits. From the outset, we knew this was a case of fraud. Because of the closeness of the relationship, the victim’s vulnerability, and his lack of awareness or supervision, the amounts went unquestioned for years. When they were caught by the victim’s protectors, the advisor tried to position his services as those of a Single Family Office and justify his compensation accordingly. That is why the defence team wanted to engage us.

My role was to provide detailed insight into:

  • Can this situation even be classified as a Family Office? If not, why?
  • Does the amount of wealth warrant the creation of a Family Office?
  • What do comparable advisors typically earn in Family Offices?
  • How is compensation normally structured in Family Offices of this size?
  • How are LTIPs structured in Family Offices?

On the face of it, it sounds simple. But being grilled by a bunch of well-trained lawyers, who are just trying to trip you up, is a different ball game. It all came down to one thing—composure. It became clear to me, through data, that the advisor had taken an unreasonable amount of money, far beyond market norms, resulting in enormous financial losses to the client.

While I did have the data in hand, testifying was, without question, one of the most stressful professional experiences I have faced. Being questioned by the opposition counsel is not like presenting to a board. Every assumption is challenged. Every number is dissected. Every word must be precise. There were moments of pressure that made me feel the weight of responsibility, not just to our own reputation, but to a vulnerable client who had already suffered financially and emotionally.

But I stayed grounded and composed. I had confidence in the integrity of our data. The long story short: the court ultimately awarded USD 121 million in damages. It was a significant victory financially, but for us, it is even more meaningful knowing that our work helped someone who had been wronged. An elderly individual, placed in a vulnerable position, was able to reclaim what had been unjustly taken.

This experience reshaped how we see our role. Before taking on the case, we worried that it might be beyond our scope. In the end, we realized that what the client truly needed was exactly what we have spent years building: insight into how trusted advisors and senior leaders are fairly and reasonably compensated in a Family Office.

While it was a challenging and stressful journey, we are incredibly proud that our expertise helped deliver justice in a situation where someone was taken advantage of.

Sometimes, the value of data is not just in helping clients hire better.
Sometimes, it helps them get their lives back.