To understand the role of an homme or femme d’affaires, think of James Bond’s Oddjob – the ultimate fix-it figure dispatched to handle any obstacle, no matter how unusual or high-stakes. In the private wealth sphere, today’s elite advisers play exactly this role: a single, hyper-capable operator trusted to handle an entire gamut of challenges without needing to pass the baton at every turn.
Often acting as an all-encompassing legal generalist or a strategic bridge between corporate enterprise and personal wealth, this role is not confined to a narrow specialism. The hommes and femmes d’affaires featured in the 2026 edition of the Spear’s Index move across domains – from cross-border tax exposure and art transactions to reputation management and corporate restructurings – with the discretion and execution of a trusted intelligence operative.
This evolution, advisers tell Spear’s, stems from a clear reality: private wealth challenges now overlap to such an extent that technical advice can no longer exist in a silo. UHNW families increasingly demand a single point of oversight: one figure who commands the full spectrum of their personal and business life.
‘A lot of families would say we’re the consigliere for that family – working alongside investment advisers and accountants, on art collections, occasionally bringing in white-collar counsel. We usually are the quarterback for everything,’ Daniel Cooper of Sterlington, an American full-service law firm primarily working with billionaires, says that his role is to act as the central strategic hub.
Related
Other advisers frame this function as the glue connecting disconnected specialists into a unified strategy:
- The Collaborative Hub: Acting as an ‘adjunct’, as described by Keystone Law‘s Jamie Horner, to a family’s established advisory network, ensuring all advisers and planners within a UHNW’s circle operate from the same playbook.
- The Orchestral Conductor: Assembling tailored ‘A-Teams’ of external experts to execute complex, multi-jurisdictional mandates seamlessly.
Leading firms are actively restructuring their operational and commercial models to support the demands of wealth. For instance, the private office model at Charles Russell Speechlys, led by Marcus Yorke-Long, illustrates this shift. Functioning as a strategic advisory layer staffed by non-lawyer experts in banking and real estate, the office acts as a central conduit for family offices and entrepreneurs. Crucially, the firm charges nothing for the private office team’s time generating revenue strictly from the specialist legal execution that follows.
Conversely, an advisory boutique model run by Monaco-based Tracy Wong operates as the mirror image: functioning essentially as a multi-family office executing every operational duty, ‘except we don’t have the assets under management’.
The advisers featured in the latest edition of the Spear’s Hommes & Femmes d’Affaires Index are selected based on their expertise across sectors and the ease with which they solve issues for their UHNW clients.
Content from our partners
Click the links below to jump to a section of this article:
- Methodology
- The best hommes and femmes d’affaires: some names to know
- The best hommes and femmes d’affaires: the complete list
- Contact us
Methodology
Each year, the Spear’s Research Unit reassesses and refreshes its rankings of the leading providers in each sector by gathering data from and about the advisers and firms themselves, assessing submission forms, collating nominations, carrying out peer reviews, reviewing data from third-party sources, gathering references and recommendations, canvassing experts and conducting hundreds of interviews.
Advisers are evaluated using a proprietary scoring system that assigns different weightings to certain attributes. These scores feed directly into each new set of rankings in the Spear’s Indices. Each of these indices are published first online (according to the research calendar) and then in print. Print publication takes the form of the annual Spear’s 500 directory, which includes the top advisers in every index.
[See also: A guide to The Spear’s 500: Everything you need to know]
Each featured adviser is profiled on spears500.com. The site allows users to search the Spear’s database of more than 4,000 entities to find one (or more) to meet their specific requirements by filtering for specific attributes such as an adviser’s location, their specialist expertise and information about their client base.
The best hommes and femmes d’affaires: some names to know
Ronald Graham
- Focus: Employment law and classic cars
- Position: Managing partner
- Firm: Winston Taylor
Winston Taylor’s Ronald Graham, who is managing partner in the firm’s Dubai office, works with families and businesses whose interests extend well beyond a single company or jurisdiction. His work covers corporate and private wealth matters, from family businesses, investments, foundations and trusts to more niche assets such as classic cars.
Despite the sums involved, Graham takes a straightforward approach to the work. ‘I don’t overly complicate matters. The goal is very much that someone is buying or selling a car,’ he tells Spear’s. His role, he says, is to bring knowledge of the cars and the industry together with the experience of a lawyer: ‘It’s being able to cut to the details.’
Read Ronald Graham’s full profile on Spears500.com
Tracy Wong
- Focus: Cross-border advisory
- Position: Founder
- Firm: Averell
Monaco-based Tracy Wong, who founded Averell in 2025, compares her advisory firm to a multi-family office. ‘Except we don’t have the assets under management,’ she clarifies. ‘We help clients to expand, build and restructure their family office structures.’
Areas of focus include succession planning, assisting with M&As, tax advice and relocation and residency work. ‘We do pretty much anything you can think of. It’s thinking outside of the box and figuring out a solution for our clients,’ she tells Spear’s.
Read Tracy Wong’s full profile on Spears500.com
Tahina Akther
- Focus: Complex financial matters
- Position: Director and head of legal services
- Firm: Wildcat Law
Barrister Tahina Akther is co-founder and legal director of Wildcat Law, a boutique firm that houses barristers and solicitors under one roof and acts for (U)HNWs and families. Much of Akther’s work involves helping her clients navigate the complex financial matters arising from divorce and separation, as well as from death, and cases often involve cross-border elements.
She also has considerable experience in issues facing family enterprises, from sham trusts and overseas assets to the establishment of companies and multi-jurisdictional disputes, including cases with connections to the UAE, Russia and Hong Kong. In a recent conversation with Spear’s, Akther noted an increase in private financial dispute resolution as a means of settling outside of the courtroom.
Read Tahina Akther’s full profile on Spears500.com
Daniel Cooper
- Focus: Wealth protection and preservation
- Position: Partner and head of private wealth
- Firm: Sterlington
From tax and estate planning to shareholder agreements and philanthropy, Sterlington partner Dan Cooper’s work spans some of the most sophisticated matters faced by multigenerational families, family offices, business owners and entrepreneurs.
Cooper joined the firm in 2025, bringing along a team from international law firm Morgan Lewis. The appeal, he explains, is working for a firm that acts as a ‘one-stop-shop’ for the world’s wealthiest clients. (Cases often involve underlying assets, investments and business interests valued in the hundreds of millions and, in some instances, billions of dollars.) ‘We work on everything clients could need. It may be that we’ve got to partner with some other people, but we really are the quarterback for everything.’
Read Daniel Cooper’s full profile on Spears500.com
Gabriel Estevez
- Focus: Commercial real estate
- Position: Partner
- Firm: Winston Taylor
Gabriel Estevez has built his practice around clients whose problem extends beyond one area of law – or one jurisdiction. ‘People come to me because they know I can make connections for them,’ he tells Spear’s, adding that he essentially serves as an ‘external legal family office’.
Estevez joined Taylor Wessing in 2012 and is now head of private wealth at Winston Taylor (the firm formed from the merger of Winston & Strawn and Taylor Wessing’s UK business), and a partner in the banking and finance team.
Read Gabriel Estevez’s full profile on Spears500.com
The best hommes and femmes d’affaires: the complete list
Click on the individual names to be directed to more detailed profiles of each adviser on The Spear’s 500 website. The table is ordered by ranking and then alphabetically by surname.
Contact us
- Click here to order a print copy of The Spear’s 500.
- To apply for inclusion in The Spear’s 500, complete our submission form.
- For further information about rankings or entries, please email research@spearswms.com; we aim to respond to all queries within two working days.
- For commercial enquiries and questions relating to enhanced profiles, please contact: sales@spearswms.com
- To keep up to date with the Spear’s 500, subscribe to our magazine, newsletter and follow Spear’s on LinkedIn and Instagram.
- If you have missed calendar deadlines for our research cycles in 2026, you can still register your interest for updates about upcoming research and rankings.
