The Private Trust Company: It Has Come of AgeThe Private Trust Company: It Has Come of Age

John P.C. Duncan, principal, Duncan Associates, LLC, Chicago, Ill.

In the late 1980s, not long after I took my traditional bank-and-trust-companies practice to the new Chicago office of a mega law firm, Jay Hughes, generations-bridging counsel to wealthy families and one of my new partners, paid me a visit. “You know trust companies and I know the wealth-management needs of extraordinarily wealthy American families,” he said. “I believe that in the next decade there will be a great deal of interest in private trust companies, like the one the Rockefeller family just chartered. With our combined expertise, we may be able to respond to that interest.” Jay was prescient. But neither of us could know then how strong the interest in private tr...