Profile
Eric Nelson serves as Co-Chair of the firm’s Global Tax Practice. Eric has a multi-faceted practice representing first-generation entrepreneurs, hedge fund and private equity fund principals, tech founders, and high-net-worth families. He counsels clients regarding various aspects of their overall financial affairs, including sophisticated estate and income tax planning, corporate restructuring, establishing and running family offices and private trust companies, sophisticated insurance planning, and corporate governance and succession planning.
Eric’s practice also involves all aspects of estate and trust administration, sophisticated trust modification and migration strategies, and helping clients achieve their philanthropic objectives, through major grant arrangements with public charities, establishing and addressing complex issues related to private foundations, and grants to donor advised funds.
Concentrations
- Estate, gift, and generation-skipping transfer tax planning
- Family offices
- Corporate governance
- Succession planning
- Private trust companies
- Trust modification/decanting
- Federal and state income taxation of trusts
Capabilities
Experience
- Designed and implemented leveraged wealth transfer strategies using multigenerational family trusts deploying family investment funds and operating businesses, including those in food manufacturing, air cargo, hospitality, construction manufacturing, and health care industries, among others.
- Restructured trusts using complex decanting and other trust modifications in order to save significant estate, generation-skipping transfer, and federal and state income taxes, and modernize family wealth ownership and access.
- Structured and established family offices.
- Structured and established regulated and unregulated private trust companies.
- Advised clients on corporate governance issues related to transition from multigenerational manufacturing businesses to family hedge fund structures.
- Restructured family’s controlling interest in publicly traded manufacturer in order to consolidate ownership of multiple family vehicles within a single ownership structure.
- Obtained IRS rulings regarding S-corporation qualification. °
- Developed planned giving strategies with major charitable institutions in order to facilitate creation of multimillion-dollar charitable endowments.
- Resolved major gift, income, and estate tax audits. °
°The above representations were handled by Mr. Nelson prior to his joining Greenberg Traurig, LLP.
Recognition & Leadership
- Listed, Leading Lawyers Network, 2023-2025
- President’s Council, Museum of Science and Industry, 2019-Present
- Member, Chicago Estate Planning Council, 2009-Present
- Member, Legacy Partners, 2012-Present
Credentials
- LL.M., Taxation, with honors, Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, 2007
- J.D., Boston College Law School, 2006
- B.A., University of Michigan, 2002
- Illinois
- U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois
- U.S. Tax Court