investment
A family office is a private organisation that invests and administers the wealth of one family (single-family office) or several (multi-family office). In deals they can act as long-duration financial buyers without a classic PE fund clock.
A family office exists to invest, report, and often to handle tax, philanthropy and succession for a family that has already created wealth — typically from a company sale or a multi-generational operating group.
In the US, the SEC Family Office Rule defines when an SFO is excluded from investment-adviser registration. Europe is a patchwork of MiFID, AIFMD and local regimes. The economic point for M&A: family offices can behave like financial buyers without a ten-year closed-end fund.
They may pay a bit less than auction-max PE, or a bit more for a cultural fit and a longer hold. There is no standard multiple.
Illustration only.
An SFO from an industrial family buys 80% of a €6m-EBITDA automation firm, founder rolls 20%, no sale in the IC paper for 15 years, leverage 2.0x — not 5.5x. Governance is a family board seat plus an independent chair. That is a family-office acquisition, not a textbook LBO.
“Family office” on a teaser distribution list is not a strategy. You need ticket size, sector comfort, hold period, and whether they have ever closed a control deal. Many MFOs only do funds and secondaries.
Sellers who want a quieter owner; situations where PE fund life is a mismatch; industry-knowledgeable capital.
Slow decision-making; key-person risk (the principal); less process professionalism than a large PE shop; confidentiality that cuts both ways. Not a substitute for due diligence.
Dazur treats family offices as a first-class investor type in matching — with mandate fields for control vs minority and hold horizon — because lumping them into “PE” produces the wrong process design.