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Capital without Borders will offer the first in-depth, cross-national examination of the wealth management profession: an extremely powerful professional group about which little is known, except that it controls large flows of capital around the world and has a significant impact on growing wealth inequality. With Oxfam estimating that 1 percent of the global population will own more than half the world's assets by 2016, and policymakers voicing increasingly urgent concerns about the political impact of inequality, this book offers a timely look at the evolution and activities of this central group of players. To understand the workings of their profession, and its complex legal and financial innovations, the author spent two years training to become a wealth manager herself. This experience gave her unique access to practitioners and their methods, and the opportunity to conduct over 60 interviews with wealth managers in 17 countries, from Switzerland to the British Virgin Islands, and from Singapore to South Africa. The findings shed light on the dynamics of growing world wealth inequality, and how they are fueled by political and economic forces. The research will inform ongoing debates about globalization and financialization, in part by making abstract issues concrete and easy to understand for a general readership. Capital without Borders explains the use of offshore banks, shell corporations, and trusts to hide billions in private wealth not only from taxation, but from all manner of legal obligations--including to creditors and family members. Such insights will be of interest not only to scholars and policy-makers, but to anyone interested in the world of wealth and high finance.--

Capital without Borders will offer the first in-depth, cross-national examination of the wealth management profession: an extremely powerful professional group about which little is known, except that it controls large flows of capital around the world and has a significant impact on growing wealth inequality. With Oxfam estimating that 1 percent of the global population will own more than half the world's assets by 2016, and policymakers voicing increasingly urgent concerns about the political impact of inequality, this book offers a timely look at the evolution and activities of this central group of players. To understand the workings of their profession, and its complex legal and financial innovations, the author spent two years training to become a wealth manager herself. This experience gave her unique access to practitioners and their methods, and the opportunity to conduct over 60 interviews with wealth managers in 17 countries, from Switzerland to the British Virgin Islands, and from Singapore to South Africa. The findings shed light on the dynamics of growing world wealth inequality, and how they are fueled by political and economic forces. The research will inform ongoing debates about globalization and financialization, in part by making abstract issues concrete and easy to understand for a general readership. Capital without Borders explains the use of offshore banks, shell corporations, and trusts to hide billions in private wealth not only from taxation, but from all manner of legal obligations--including to creditors and family members. Such insights will be of interest not only to scholars and policy-makers, but to anyone interested in the world of wealth and high finance--Provided by publisher.

This paper offers a fresh perspective on the connection between professional work and socio-economic inequality by tracing the emergence of the trust and estate planning profession in America. Unlike studies of inequality and the professions that focus on the status attainment of individuals and their families, or on labor market segregation, this paper explores professional work as a means of creating and reproducing larger systems of socio-economic stratification. Trust and estate planners contribute to macrolevel inequality by helping wealthy clients accumulate large fortunes and pass them on to their descendants; this, in turn, has shaped the status and composition of other professions. As sources of economic power have changed moving from land and factories to more fungible forms the need for legal, organizational and financial strategies to protect assets from taxation, creditors, and spendthrift heirs intensified, catalyzing the transformation of trust and estate planners from amateurs to professionals. Thus, trust and estate planners are both products and producers of the changing worlds of work and wealth. To shed light on these transformations, this paper will draw on the literatures of sociology, economics and anthropology, focusing on these professionals' three critical roles as investors, administrators, and guardians of wealth in reproducing systems of stratification.

Stock market populism- investment clubs and economic history -- Investment clubs as markets in microcosm -- Group composition & the business case for diversity -- Getting ahead versus getting along-decision making in investment clubs -- Reflections on investing in the 1990s -- Implications and conclusions

Why do professionals engage in or aid misconduct, rather than rejecting it as a threat to their legitimacy and labor market survival? This article contributes to the scholarly agenda by drawing on an ethnographic study of professionals who facilitate offshore tax avoidance for the ultra-wealthy. This form of expert advisory work has become highly controversial, and is increasingly classified as a form of professional wrongdoing. Building on theories of institutional work and categorization, the study theorizes practitioners' responses to field-level legitimacy threats. Specifically, the article models a process in which misconduct is recategorized in terms of the core norms that underpin professional legitimacy. Through this process, practitioners create institutional change by altering the way they see themselves and their work, transforming the 'vice' of tax avoidance into the professional 'virtues' of public service and expert neutrality. This model advances knowledge compared to previous research on professional misconduct, which was situated primarily at the organization level, and responds to calls for analysis of 'agentic self-categorization' processes in creating the micro-foundations for legitimacy in the professions.

This article offers a new perspective on the connection between socioeconomic inequality and occupations by examining the impact of trust and estate planners on global wealth stratification. While many studies treat the professions as mirrors of inequalities in their environments, this article looks at the ways professionals participate in the creation of stratification regimes. Trust and estate planners do this by sheltering their clients' assets from taxation, thereby preserving private wealth for future generations. Using tools such as trusts, offshore banks, and shell corporations, these professionals keep a significant portion of the world's private wealth beyond the reach of the state. Trust and estate planning thus contributes to creating and maintaining socioeconomic inequality on a global scale. The significance of the profession has grown as wealth itself has become more fungible, spurring innovation in legal, organizational, and financial strategies, and thwarting a myriad of laws and policies designed to limit enduring inequality in modern, democratic societies.