The Modern Family Office

Editor's Introduction

Building the Modern Family Office

Institutions can be built without becoming institutional in the wrong sense. This edition asks what that distinction actually requires.

Mr Okechukwu Kalu, Editor-in-Chief

Cover Story

Cover Story

Wentworth Hall: From Alternative Investments to the Modern Family Office

Founded in 2006, Wentworth Hall has evolved from a specialist consultancy shaped by Ian Morley’s career in alternative investments into a family-led organisation investing across private companies, fintech, blockchain and emerging technology. Its development speaks to one of the defining questions facing the modern family office: how does an organisation built around a founder’s experience evolve for the generation that follows?

Ian Morley · Chairman, Wentworth Hall Family Office

Governance

The Institutional Family Office

Family offices are hiring, reporting and investing more like institutions than they did a decade ago. The governance layer meant to sit above all of it has, on the evidence, grown far more slowly.

James Taylor

Family Office Voices

Alex Felman: Staying in Wealth Creation Mode

Most wealth-preservation strategies, argues second-generation investor Alex Felman, are strategies for going broke more slowly. He explains why he thinks the real threats are lifestyle inflation and family arithmetic, not tax.

Alex Felman · Second-Generation Member of Felman Family Office

Technology & Data

AI Inside the Family Office

Family offices have almost every structural reason to be early adopters of AI, and are not. Understanding why is more instructive than the adoption statistics themselves.

James Taylor

Cross-Border Spotlight · Asia-Pacific

Singapore’s Family Office Growth: What the Numbers Actually Tell Us

Singapore has emerged as a major centre for Single Family Offices. Behind the headline growth is a wider story about investment infrastructure, tax incentives, regulatory oversight and the city-state’s role in cross-border private wealth.

James Taylor

Real Estate · Global Wealth

The New Luxury Real Estate Map: Where Global Wealth Is Buying in 2026

Prime residential markets are moving in different directions, but international demand remains resilient. For family offices, the bigger change is not simply where wealth is buying — it is what a global portfolio of homes is expected to do.

James Taylor

Succession

Succession Is an Organisational Challenge — Not Just a Family One

Half of family offices have no succession plan for their own executive leadership, a separate question from whoever inherits within the family. Most succession planning still treats the two as one problem.

James Taylor

UKFOS Delegate Spotlight

Hanna Sundqvist: Making Private Credit Risk More Transparent

Private credit grew into a trillion-dollar market before the data infrastructure to monitor it existed. Hanna Sundqvist of Moody's Analytics on what allocators can and cannot see inside the asset class.

Hanna Sundqvist · Head of Private Credit, Europe · Moody’s Analytics

Operations

Build, Buy or Outsource?

For the second year running, family offices in North America named the same technology problem as their top concern. The persistence of that finding says more about how offices decide what to keep in-house than about the technology itself.

James Taylor

Governance

Riding the Family’s Curve

Wealthy families are not static institutions. Patrik Hayoz, PhD, on the predictable curve of family evolution — and why the family office that lags behind it puts continuity at risk.

Patrik Hayoz, PhD · Founder, LIOMSA Advisers

UKFOS Delegate Spotlight

Malcolm Ferguson: Inside Europe’s Venture Secondaries Market

Companies are staying private for longer, and the shareholders who backed them want out. Molten Ventures partner Malcolm Ferguson on what venture secondaries reveal about pricing, liquidity and the discipline of buying someone else's position.

Malcolm Ferguson · Partner, Secondaries · Molten Ventures

Cybersecurity & Risk

The Vulnerable Family Office

43% of family offices have been attacked in the past two years. Fewer than three in ten believe they have a response plan they could actually rely on. The distance between those two figures is a governance problem before it is a technology one.

James Taylor

Family Office Voices

Filling the Gap Between Land and Institution

Institutional real-estate mandates cannot take planning risk. Sophie Brown, who raises capital for a Dubai single family office building student housing across six European cities, on why the return sits precisely where the institutions are not allowed to go.

Sophie Brown · Head of Capital Relationships, Capital Assured & CASACASA · Exco Member, Women in Family Offices (WIFO); author of The Purposeful Founder

Operations

The Rising Cost of Institutional Quality

Offices above $1 billion in assets now spend an average of $6.6 million a year simply to operate. That number matters less on its own than what it is actually being spent on.

James Taylor

Cross-Border Spotlight · European Union

Luxembourg and Family Wealth: Understanding Europe’s Cross-Border Investment Hub

Luxembourg-domiciled fund assets reached €8.2 trillion at the end of 2025. For family offices, the significance lies less in the headline number than in the cross-border investment infrastructure that has developed around it.

James Taylor

Leadership & Continuity

The New Family Office Professional

Multi-location family offices have grown from 30% to 44% of the market in two years. The question this raises is less about hiring and more about what kind of professional can operate inside a more institutional structure without losing the judgement a family office still needs.

James Taylor

Family Office Voices

Per Wimmer: Wealth Preservation, Real Assets and Investing for the Long Term

Per Wimmer built his family office around protecting capital rather than compounding it as fast as possible. Answering briefly, and mostly in nouns, he sets out where he is willing to take risk and where he is not.

Per Wimmer · Founder & CEO · Wimmer Family Office

Technology & Data

From Spreadsheets to Infrastructure

More than four in ten family offices are now developing a technology strategy. Nearly three-quarters still describe themselves as underinvested in the operational technology that strategy is meant to deliver.

James Taylor

UKFOS Delegate Spotlight

Christian Li: Family Office Structuring Across Global Markets

A family holding assets in four jurisdictions has an administrative problem as much as a tax one. Christian Li, who has run fiduciary structures for family offices since 1999, on what actually breaks when ownership crosses borders.

Christian Li · Founder & Group CEO · CKLB Fiduciary Group

Private Wealth Regulation & Compliance

When Private Wealth Becomes Publicly Visible: Managing Reputational and Institutional Exposure Across Borders

The article examines how internationally mobile families can accumulate reputational and institutional exposure as their wealth, residences, investments and relationships span multiple jurisdictions. It explores how visibility, politically sensitive relationships, government interaction, regulatory culture and differing institutional perceptions can affect families beyond conventional tax, legal and wealth-structuring considerations.

Peter Kovacs · Director of Strategy, William Blackstone Internacional, Inc.

Governance

Beyond the Balance Sheet

Nearly half of family offices still lack a functioning investment committee, even as their remit visibly expands into education, identity and next-generation development.

James Taylor

UKFOS Delegate Spotlight

Jonathan Child: When Family Wealth Disputes Become a Crisis

Disputes lawyer Jonathan Child on why the decisions that shape a family dispute — jurisdiction, confidentiality, who can see the documents — are usually made years before anyone falls out.

Jonathan Child · Partner · Velitor Law

Succession · Governance

Succession Planning in the Modern Family Office: Beyond the Transfer of Wealth

Assets may pass from one generation to another, but so too can control of companies, voting rights, investment responsibilities, relationships with advisers, knowledge accumulated over decades and responsibility for the family office itself.

James Taylor

Sponsored Content · Investment Process

From Deal Screening to Investment Conviction

Family offices and private investors rarely suffer from a shortage of investment opportunities. The more difficult question is deciding which opportunities deserve attention, which warrant further investigation and which justify the time and resources required for full Commercial Due Diligence.

Daniel Nikic · Managing Partner, Cohres