Episode 4: Ruby Hugueny on the Family Business Enterprise

Ruby Hugueny, Geneva-based family office consultant with over 40 years advising high-net-worth families including BIC and LVMH, joins R. Adam Smith to explore what it actually takes to run a family office at the highest level of trust and discretion. Hugueny argues that confidentiality isn't a policy but a lived discipline, built through NDAs, strict access controls, and constant staff training, the kind of infrastructure that lets a consultant become genuinely indispensable to a family. She walks through her path from crisis-era Crédit Lyonnais to building a private family office inside BIC's mansion, then into LVMH and a stint at the FIA alongside Jean Todt, contrasting a utilitarian family brand with a luxury house that "sells itself." A practical conversation on art acquisition strategy, restoring a classified Parisian mansion in nine months, and why the third generation of family businesses so often struggles to stay as hungry as the first.