Published: 3 November 2026
A house in Dubai, a stake in the family business and a portfolio managed from London may each answer to a different legal system. Within the family, however, the decisions about all three often rest with a single person. As the next generation comes of age, many families look for something more durable than one person’s judgement: a structure that records who may act, on what terms, and for how long.
That is the purpose of a family office, and Abu Dhabi Global Market, better known as ADGM, has written a regime specifically for it. Since it opened on Al Maryah Island in 2015, the financial centre has applied English common law and equity directly, and its own courts are broadly modelled on the English system. By the end of 2025 it counted 12,671 active licences.
Why Families Choose Abu Dhabi
Part of the appeal is familiarity. Advisers in London, Geneva or Singapore can read an ADGM document without translating its principles, and the centre’s separate authorities for registration, financial regulation and the courts follow a pattern they will recognise.
Part of it is simplicity. A family office in ADGM may hold investments, employ staff, oversee property and manage household affairs under a single licence. Abu Dhabi has also signed more than a hundred bilateral investment and double taxation treaties, according to ADGM, which suits families whose interests span several countries. For those living in Dubai, the arrangement requires no change of home; the office simply needs an address of its own in Abu Dhabi.
One Family or Several
The single family office is the usual starting point. It serves one family alone, and ADGM asks for minimum family net assets of USD 10 million, though the office itself needs no minimum capital. Nor does it require a financial services permission, being registered instead as a controlled activity, and it carries no audit requirement. A family may also establish it directly, without engaging a service provider, for an incorporation fee of USD 5,600 and annual renewal of USD 5,300.
Discretion is built in. A single family office may register as a restricted scope company, so that only its constitution and registered office appear on the public register, while full details remain with the Registrar.
A multi-family office works differently. Because it serves several households through a shared professional team, it needs a Category 4 licence from ADGM’s Financial Services Regulatory Authority, which the centre describes as light-touch regulation. The incorporation fee is USD 16,800, and a modest capital requirement applies.
Foundations and Other Holding Vehicles
The office manages the family’s affairs, but the assets frequently sit in distinct entities beneath it. ADGM offers three: the foundation, the special purpose vehicle and the trust.
Introduced in 2017 as the first regime of its kind in the UAE, the ADGM foundation is the most distinctive. It is a separate legal person, much like a company, yet it has no shareholders. The founder records the family’s wishes in a charter and by-laws, a council administers the foundation day to day, and a guardian, optional during the founder’s lifetime and compulsory afterwards, sees that those wishes are honoured. Beneficiaries are not named publicly, and the accounts are not published.
A foundation can sit at the head of a family’s holdings, bringing businesses, investments and property together under one set of rules. ADGM notes that foundations can move into or out of its jurisdiction, and that the initial endowment can be as little as USD 100. Special purpose vehicles, by contrast, usually hold one asset apiece, so that each holding stays apart from the rest.
Property, Art and Other Possessions
Few family fortunes consist of financial assets alone, and a family office can decide which homes are kept for the family’s own use and which are let.
Ownership, however, follows the law of the place where each property stands. In November 2018 the Dubai Land Department signed a memorandum of understanding with ADGM’s Registration Authority, allowing ADGM-registered companies to own property in Dubai’s freehold areas within the Department’s own framework and registration procedures. Families therefore confirm, property by property, which entity is eligible to hold title before any transfer is made.
Closer to the office, on Al Maryah Island itself, Four Seasons Private Residences Abu Dhabi offers 124 apartments in a 34-storey building designed by PLP Architecture, with interiors by HBA, all fully managed by Four Seasons.
For families whose office also looks after art, jewellery or cars, Abu Dhabi has become a natural place to buy and sell. In August 2024 the investment company ADQ agreed to take a minority stake in Sotheby’s, as part of an investment of about USD 1 billion. Sixteen months later, Sotheby’s inaugural Abu Dhabi Collectors’ Week closed with auctions on Saadiyat Beach that realised a combined USD 133.4 million, with bidders from 35 countries.
The Steps to Registration
The process begins with a family deciding which assets the office will oversee and which relatives it will serve. ADGM then asks for a business plan to be submitted ahead of the online application. The application is made through the Registration Authority’s online portal, where forms, supporting documents and fees are submitted together, and an approved licence arrives by email.
The official fees, it should be said, cover registration only; premises, staff and professional advice account for most of the budget.
Tax and the Wider Picture
ADGM is a financial free zone, and under UAE corporate tax law a qualifying free zone person may benefit from a 0 per cent rate on qualifying income. Other income is taxed at the standard 9 per cent, and the conditions are set out in detail by the Federal Tax Authority. Family foundations have their own route: since 2025 the Authority has accepted applications for eligible foundations to be treated as tax-transparent unincorporated partnerships.
For international families, the UAE position is only one consideration, since tax residence and assets held abroad also bear on the result. Advice that considers the family’s whole position is the sensible course.
Preparing the Next Generation
The structures are, in a sense, the easier task. More delicate is agreeing how decisions will be made once the founder steps back. ADGM encourages families to adopt a family charter, a document recording shared aims, the role of professional managers and the way younger members are brought into the family’s affairs.
No regulation requires a charter, yet it is the one document in the arrangement concerned with people rather than assets. For a family that owns homes as well as investments, it can also settle in advance what becomes of the house everyone grew up in.
A Structure for the Long Term
A well-made family office does not move the house in Dubai, the business or the portfolio in London. What it alters is who answers for them, and on whose behalf. ADGM supplies the framework; the family supplies the rest, so that responsibility passes between generations with the same care that went into building the wealth.
