We work with successful Asian families to help them establish communication platforms and decision making structures for both the family and the family enterprise.We facilitate family meetings to help the family talk about their vision and values and the relationship between the family and the family enterprise.

We help them to create the “rules of the road” so that family members know what to expect in the future.

We believe that the key to passing on a successful family enterprise that will flourish for at least five generations comes down to the way in which the family members make joint decisions together, and this is called family governance.

While our approach is tailored for every family, we often use the process of creating a family council and family constitution to help build the “family team”, to strengthen family unity, and to help the family resolve the specific issues that they have been unable to resolve on their own.

The process of creating family governance is a problem solving process.

Christian Stewart

Christian Stewart founded Family Legacy Asia in July 2008 to help Asian families preserve their family wealth for generations...More >

The recipient of this award – Christian Stewart - original focused on tax and estate duty issues, but since establishing Family Legacy Asia in 2008 he has specialized in all aspects of family governance. He is widely regarded by his peers globally as one of Asia’s leading experts in the field, and has a client base of families and private client intermediary clients spread throughout the region.

Citation for award as Leading Individual Advisor at the WealthBriefingAsia Awards 2017
I am delighted to act as a personal and professional reference for Mr. Christian G. Stewart. I have known Mr. Stewart for nearly 10 years during his employment with JPMorgan and since the initiation of Family Legacy Asia (HK) Limited. I have had the pleasure of working with him during both of these employments and have found his work in both legal and family advisory practice to be of the highest global standard.

In addition, his work with families and their complex transition issues brings him into a very limited company of practitioners capable of dealing with the most complex families on the globe. It is my pleasure to act for Mr. Stewart and his firm in offering for them my highest recommendation.

James E. Hughes Jr., author of Family Wealth; Keeping it in the Family, Family;
The Compact Among Generations, and co-author of The Cycle of the Gift
Family Legacy Asia is a reliable and dependable, discreet, professional family advisory firm that every serious family business can (and should) consider to engage with.

It offers practical and concise education on family planning and relationships and how this relates to the commercial aspects of family business.

Christian Stewart is likeable, friendly, and a professional family counselor with the complete tools to provide crucial advice to any family business.

Client feedback
Christian and I have served many mutual clients while he was heading the wealth planning department of JPMorgan in Hong Kong, and after he established Family Legacy Asia. With respect to such matters, I served as U.S. tax counsel to the high net-worth and family clients. Christian, given his legal background and broad knowledge and experience regarding wealth and business succession planning, was always instrumental in smooth coordination, legal and tax issues spotting, and completing the complex cross-border trust and succession projects in a most professional manner. He plays the important role of family office lawyer for these significant private and family clients. It has been a pleasure working with Christian.

James Tsang, Partner at Squire, Sanders & Dempsey L.L.P.
Christian is one of the few independent family business advisors in Asia. Trained as a lawyer, he has very strong technical know-how in legal and tax advice. What marks him out from the field however is a multi-disciplinary understanding of  family enterprises.

From family meetings to governance structures, Christian demonstrates a keen understanding of the interlocking issues. Despite his ‘Western’ origin, he is culturally sensitive in handling issues related to Asian family business.

Christian has participated and spoken in our workshops for professional family advisors. We appreciate his help in promoting the ecology of family business with us.

Jeremy Cheng
Manager, Centre for Family Business,
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
I recently had the pleasure to work alongside Christian Stewart with a 4th generation family in Hong Kong. I was very impressed with Christian's Governance presentation - so much so that I would consider his guidance for established family foundations, as being essential. His view is that without a common sense of values, mission and communication channels, a family will surely drift into conflict, or worse, apathy.

His delivery was clear, methodical and really engages all participants - not always easy with multiple generations in the room.

Paul Angwin, Managing Director - Asia Pacific, People and Planet
I have worked with Christian together in a number of family meetings from the 1st to 3rd generation of HK family businesses. We took families through a series of processes to help them identify shared dreams, improve communication skills, enable family members to talk to each other, and prepare them for their transitions.

The way that Christian works, he:
- is able to integrate the family and business system when helping families.
- could help family members to see their situation in an objective manner;
- is able to share his family advisory experience gained from other Chinese and Asian families.

Nicholin Choi, Managing Director, Sunwide Management Limited
I used to work with Christian when I was a Wealth Advisor at JPMorgan Private Bank in Singapore. I learnt a lot from Christian about family governance, private trust company structures and business succession planning. Many successful families today want to plan well for the future, enhance communication, improve family relationships and develop a good succession plan for the business. We did family meetings for some of our clients and helped them with such issues. The clients were very excited and happy about how these meetings helped them to talk to their children about family wealth issues. With his deep understanding of family dynamics, his ability to address critical individual and family concerns, his appreciation for the challenges that accompany family wealth and family business, Christian has done a lot to develop real, practical actions and steps that families who are interested in family governance can take.

Christina Koh, Private Bank Wealth Advisor, Singapore