Family power. That’s what a €175,475,380 EuroMillions win represents.
JILL KERBY - MONEY MATTERS
This isn’t just a life changing windfall for this family syndicate; this is a generational-changing event which could transform not just their own lives and those of their immediate families - but that of their grandchildren and grandchildren.
The best way for the least traumatic outcome of their incredible good fortune will be if they don’t make any major decisions too quickly, except to hire the right sort of advisers, starting perhaps with a PR adviser to come between them and the rest of world if their names become public.
Winning c€175.5 million isn’t the same as a five, ten or even 20 millions jackpot said certified financial planner Marc Westlake, a founding member of the Society of Financial Planner of Ireland – and my own financial planner, as regular readers of my weekly column know - told me when the winners contacted the National Lottery last Thursday.
“There are plenty of companies on the Irish stock exchange with a lower capitalisation than this amount,” he said. “The first thing this syndicate should do after their initial celebration is to identify and hire a team of trusted advisers that can provide accountancy, legal and financial advice and that ideally has had experience of dealing with large lottery winners.”
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Such a team, he said “will be able to set up a ‘Family Office’ and provide impartial banking, tax, succession planning and investment advice.” This will also include identifying the safest international banks into which this huge sum can be spread, “and not just AIB or Bank of Ireland.”
Big lottery winners are sometimes steered towards the wealth management divisions of a large bank but Westlake said the problem with that is that these wealth adviser’s “are foremost looking out for their shareholders’ interests, not the clients’.”
“This syndicate needs to remind themselves that they have the money to find and pay for experienced, independent advisers, even if they have to go outside of Ireland.”
Lottery winners often say their first instinct is to share their great fortune with loved ones, friends and charities and then to buy the wonderful new homes and cars and holidays they’d only dreamt about.
All these good intentions and dreams are possible, but this isn’t just any old lottery win and there is certainly no going back to the old life you had before whether a giant family trust was set up or each sibling took their €29 million share.
This is unearned money – the most dangerous kind - that is going to impact on a lot of other people’s lives whether it’s spent wisely or disastrously.
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