Family Legacy

Bruno Wang’s late father, Andrew Wang, was a successful civilian businessman, providing consultancy and agency services to European defence manufacturers. In the early 1990s, he facilitated the landmark acquisition of six naval frigates by Taiwan from Thomson CSF.

This sale was a diplomatic breakthrough at the time, significantly contributing to the security and stability of Taiwan in a period of transition and volatility and against an ongoing military threat from China.

The transaction has since been the subject of political controversy and unfounded allegations in Taiwan, resulting in the freezing of assets in various jurisdictions. This has been successfully challenged from abroad. In 2010 the International Chamber of Commerce International Court of Arbitration (ICC Court of Arbitration) found that while “Thomson had breached the Bravo Contract” by paying commission, there had been “no impropriety or wrongdoing on Mr Wang’s part whatsoever”. When the allegations were raised about his father before the Cayman court in 2014, the judge dismissed them as not only “wholly unintelligible” but “scandalous and vexatious”.

Bruno Wang was a young student in California at the time the contracts were concluded. In 2019 the Taiwanese Supreme Court upheld the ruling that he and his family were innocent third parties in this dispute.

Bruno Wang inherited his late father’s wealth as the eldest son. Following Andrew Wang’s passing and a final determination by the Swiss Federal Office of Justice in 2021, he consented to the restitution of certain assets to Taiwan. The majority of Bruno Wang’s substantial assets in Switzerland, Liechtenstein, the Cayman Islands and the Bahamas have been released and the legal assistance proceedings in all of these jurisdictions were concluded and final.