— Chapter II —

Logbook

Dated notes from work at the harbour.

“ It's all about intel. Real-world alpha. The digital world is a commodity. ” compound248
Watercolour of a desk with an open laptop, charts on the screen, an espresso cup, and meadow flowers in a small vase.
Plate II The desk where the notes are written. Espresso, meadow flowers, a phone with the ringer off.
  1. 2026-04-19 Workshop note Southern Germany · NRW

    Konrad, sixty-seven, needed to raise two hundred and fifty thousand euros against an otherwise debt-free property worth one and a half million, by year end. His house bank wanted four weeks, a valuation procedure and a meeting with two generations of his family. We resolved it in eleven days through a Liechtenstein structure that names his daughter — not him — as future beneficiary. The house bank later rang to ask how it had been possible. I returned the call.

    — M. F.
  2. 2026-04-12 Tax note DE / CH

    A common misconception, and a costly one: that a thirty-percent stake in a Swiss AG counts as inheritance-tax-privileged business assets under German law. It does not. § 13b para. 1 no. 3 ErbStG requires the seat or place of management of the company to be in the EU or EEA. Switzerland belongs to neither. In the event of an unexpected death, inheritance tax arrives like a plank dropped on the kitchen table. The fix exists — for instance, by contributing the holding into a German commercial GmbH & Co. KG, where the EU-residency requirement no longer applies. Whoever learns this after the fact, learns it too late.

    — M. F.
  3. 2026-04-05 Market observation DACH

    Four cold letters in a single week, addressed to the same owner of a profitable maintenance-contract business in North Rhine-Westphalia. Three from the INSEAD alumni directory, one from a London search-fund equity. What they share: not one mentions the workforce. Not one asks after the workshop in which the owner has stood every morning at half past six since 1989. Not one uses his first name. Whoever hunts lifeworks the way one trades blocks of shares will lose lifeworks the way one loses blocks of shares. That is the gap we serve.

    — M. F.
  4. 2026-03-28 Reading note FAZ · Welt · CNBC

    Two pieces in one week worth reading together: “ Inheriting rather than earning — the risky tendencies of the German economy ” in Die Welt, and “ Wealthy inheritors plan to fire their parents' wealth advisors ” at CNBC. The substance, on both sides of the Atlantic, is identical: the generation that inherits has neither the relation to work nor the relation to the adviser of its parents. The lesson for the patriarch who is thinking today is plain: build, in your lifetime, a relationship that your heirs will continue with you, not without you. A change of advisers by the next generation is not a risk — it is a statistic.

    — M. F.
  5. 2026-03-19 Harbour note Vaduz · Singapore

    Watercolour of the Glacier Express crossing the Landwasser Viaduct in winter.
    The longer way is often the quieter one.
    A client, seventy-three, asked me whether it still makes sense today to “ move south ”, given what real estate in Mallorca and Portugal has done to itself over the last decade. My answer: do not move — keep keys. Shared availability across three or four quiet houses, in different climates and different jurisdictions, is today cheaper than a single second residence, and faster in an emergency. Concierge and availability are the new ownership. Liechtenstein in spring, Singapore in autumn, Bali in November — and Zurich, when the grandchildren come.

    — M. F.
  6. 2026-03-08 Workshop note FL

    A patriarch, seventy-one, wanted to understand what a multi-signature wallet actually is. We sat for three hours at his dining table in Bregenz. By the end he had grasped that, at heart, it is nothing other than the four-eyes principle he has applied to bank transfers for thirty years — without the bank. The questions he asked next were the right ones: what happens if I do not wake up tomorrow? Who then has the second key? I answered with the precision he had earned. That same evening we built a recovery path comprising his daughter-in-law, his notary and myself. Three keys, two signatures. He slept better.

    — M. F.
  7. 2026-02-22 Tax note FL · DE

    The Inter IKEA Foundation in Liechtenstein keeps a sentence on its website that any business-linked foundation should adopt verbatim: “ If any family member becomes employed in any of the businesses owned by Inter IKEA Foundation, they would only be eligible for a salary under the same terms as any other co-worker. ” Whoever cleanly separates family and company protects both. The most common advisory falsehood in the German-speaking world is that a foundation takes the patriarch out of the game. It does not. It orders the game. Würth, at eighty-nine, is the living proof.

    — M. F.
Watercolour of an alpine marmot sitting upright on a stone in the mountains.
Alert, but not nervous.

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