I’m Martín Litwak, founder of UNTITLED, and today I want to tell a story that started fifteen years ago.
A firm that started as two people
There were only two of us when I founded this firm, then called Litwak & Partners, in a small office above my house in Parque Batlle, Montevideo. I had already been living in Uruguay for a few years, and had no idea the future held another move, this time to Miami, let alone that the firm would change its name and that UNTITLED would open offices in Miami, the British Virgin Islands, and Madrid.
I also never imagined we’d grow into a team of more than forty people, or that we’d serve clients from countries as different as they are alike: all of them need the same thing, the peace of mind that comes from knowing what they have is protected.
Why reaching 15 years is no small feat
Staying in business for that long takes effort, training, innovation, hard work, and a sense of where things are headed. The statistics are unforgiving for new ventures: in developing countries, more than half close their doors within the first three years.
Three years; we’ve made it fifteen. And we’re still growing.
Like the rest of the world, we weathered a pandemic and everything it left behind. But we also weathered the usual instability and new kinds of it: bad presidents, decisions that undermined individual freedoms, wars, taxes, economic crises, political swings, and simply the passage of time.
What hasn’t changed in fifteen years
We got to where we are because we didn’t betray ourselves. We have values, principles. Despite continuous growth, we hold on to our idea of a boutique firm: day-to-day contact with clients, conversations that go beyond solving a specific problem, active listening, empathy.
As I always say, no two clients are alike, because no two people or families are alike. And understanding what someone needs takes more than knowing their net worth: it means understanding who they are, what they value, what they need, what their purpose in life is. More often than not, that life purpose is tied to a wealth purpose: how we want to live, how we want to do it, and how we can get there.
A world that changes fast, and a region that changes less than it seems
Where was the world back in 2011? Cristina Kirchner, Sebastián Piñera, José Mujica, Dilma Rousseff, Evo Morales, Rafael Correa, Hugo Chávez, Felipe Calderón, Alan García, Raúl Castro, Fernando Lugo, Daniel Ortega, Barack Obama, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, Nicolás Sarkozy, Silvio Berlusconi, Vladimir Putin.
The world, as you’ll see, has changed a bit. Our region and its centers of power, less so. Nor have the goals of major powers and the organizations that bring them together (the OECD, the EU, and others) changed: less privacy, higher tax pressure, less tax competition. And what concerns us most whenever we think about our wealth and the path our lives are on hasn’t changed either: political instability and legal uncertainty remain as present as ever.
That’s why, in 2021, when I wrote for our tenth anniversary, I said we weren’t the same firm anymore. Today, we’re not the same firm we were five years ago either. Proactivity, innovation, and specialization are part of our principles, and living up to them means we have to keep moving: learning, updating, drawing on creativity to solve problems. So our clients can sleep easy.
From Litwak & Partners to three specialized firms
Over this decade and a half, beyond the shift from Litwak & Partners to UNTITLED, we built business units and diversified into other specialized firms: EVOLVE, exclusively for artists and professional athletes, and UNTITLED Sherpa, our legal family office for high-net-worth families or those with more complex structures.
We didn’t multiply our services or turn into a full-service, do-everything law firm. We never will be. We use our expertise to concentrate years of knowledge and work into three firms with specific objectives but the same essence. We are UNTITLED. We always will be.
We don’t want to take on more than we can handle, and we don’t intend to. We didn’t in these fifteen years, and we won’t going forward: we’ll remain specialists in wealth protection, international tax planning, and family governance. Our growth comes from entering new markets, working with clients across different industries, and serving different levels of wealth, not from taking on things we don’t understand with the same depth we understand wealth structuring.
What this means for those who trust us
Fifteen years of continuity, in an industry where regional and regulatory instability is the norm, is also a concrete guarantee: that of a team that will still be there when the rules of the game change, because it already has been. For the families and advisors who work with us, that translates into something simple: predictability in a field that rarely offers it.
Fifteen years later, a new starting point
I’m very proud of what we’ve achieved, and very grateful. Not for the international awards and recognitions, of which there were many, but for the growth reflected in numbers and milestones, for having held on to solid principles through the daily work, for a team that grew in number but also in training, for the respect we’ve earned within the industry.
What looks like a milestone today is, in fact, a new starting point. As I write this, decisions are being made at family tables and at the desks of those who decide how the world changes, decisions that will push us to keep moving forward. And we will. That’s my promise, and the promise of the whole team: we will never give up, stand still, or settle.
Thank you to the team for everything you give. To our clients, for choosing us, challenging us, and telling us what you need, which becomes our purpose. To those who don’t choose us but still walk alongside us and respect what we do. Thank you to everyone who was part of these 15 years, and in advance, to everyone who’ll join in the many years ahead.