Capital Without Borders: Wealth Managers and the One Percent
The author trained as a wealth manager; the best account of the professionals who build the structures.
Summary
Harrington, a sociologist, trained as a wealth manager and obtained the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners qualification in order to study the profession from inside, then interviewed sixty-five practitioners across eighteen jurisdictions.
The methodological choice is what makes the book distinctive. Wealth managers do not talk to researchers, and Harrington gained access by becoming a credentialed member of the profession.
The substantive findings concern what these practitioners actually do. The core instruments are trusts, foundations and offshore companies, frequently combined across multiple jurisdictions so that no single authority can see the whole structure. The trust is the fundamental device: it separates legal ownership from beneficial enjoyment, which means an asset can be owned by no one for tax and reporting purposes while a family continues to benefit from it. Harrington traces the trust to medieval England, where crusading knights transferred property to trusted associates, and shows that the instrument's essential function has not changed.
Her sociological argument is that wealth managers are the professionals who make inequality durable across generations. Without these structures, taxation, forced heirship rules, creditor claims, divorce and family conflict would erode large fortunes within a few generations. The profession exists to prevent that, and its practitioners understand their role as protecting clients from what they regard as unjust confiscation.
She also documents the profession's own norms: the requirement of trust and discretion, the personal intimacy with clients' family conflicts, and the practitioners' own political and moral views.
The sample is sixty-five interviews and the analysis is qualitative. Harrington argues a position about inequality that readers may weigh differently. The description of the instruments and of how the profession understands itself is the empirical contribution and is not available elsewhere.
Key takeaways 7
- A trust separates legal ownership from beneficial enjoyment, so an asset can be owned by no one for reporting purposes while a family benefits from it.
- Structures combine trusts, foundations and companies across multiple jurisdictions so that no single authority can observe the whole arrangement.
- Without these structures, taxation, forced heirship, creditors and family conflict would erode large fortunes within a few generations.
- Wealth managers are the professionals who make concentrated wealth durable across generations rather than merely advising on it.
- The trust originated in medieval England to hold property for absent crusaders and its essential function has not changed.
- Practitioners understand their role as protecting clients from confiscation rather than as facilitating avoidance.
- Access to this profession required the researcher to obtain its professional qualification, because practitioners do not otherwise speak to outsiders.
Who should read it
Readers who want an empirical account of how large fortunes are structured and preserved, from inside the profession that does it.
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Where it sits in the reference 1
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