According to the Campden Wealth survey, more than 90% of people who are currently not using family office services would consider establishing or joining a family office in the future. At the same time, family offices, as representatives of the private wealth management field, are emerging and attracting attention in China.
Every year, many professional research institutions release a global family office list based on factors such as asset management size and influence. Today, we will introduce the top ten family offices in the world and unveil their mysterious veil.
Walton Enterprises, Inc. is located in Bentonville, Arkansas, USA, and primarily provides services for the personal and business needs of the Sam Walton and Helen Walton family. These services include financial/accounting, tax, investment, legal, risk management, insurance, and more.
Sam Walton is a legendary figure in the American retail industry. Over the course of 50 years, he transformed a small grocery store into a powerful business empire by founding Walmart and Sam’s Club.
In 2022, Walmart topped the Fortune Global 500 list with a revenue of $572.754 billion, marking its ninth consecutive year as the world’s largest company.
Bezos Expeditions was established in 2003 and is the personal investment platform of Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.
In addition to creating the Amazon business empire, Bezos is also an investment master. Over the years, Bezos Expeditions has invested in social networking company Twitter, digital media company Business Insider, nuclear fusion energy company General Fusion, biotech company Juno Therapeutics, data processing company Domo, and enterprise cloud computing software provider Workday, among others. In addition, through Bezos Expeditions, Bezos also holds controlling stakes in projects such as The Washington Post and the space exploration project Blue Origin.
In 2021, Bezos boarded the New Shepard, a rocket developed by Blue Origin, to personally conduct the first manned space flight test. This was not only the first paid passenger flight in history for a commercial space company, but also the first unmanned all-civilian space flight – there was not a single professional astronaut in the capsule, only ordinary people.
“Investing in risk” and “looking to the long term” are Bezos’s business principles. In an interview program, Bezos said:
We are very willing to invest in startups with a 5-7 year cycle and huge risks, which most companies would not do. The two elements of investing in risk and looking to the long term have made Amazon one of the most distinctive companies among the numerous internet companies, not the most special, but very characteristic.
01 Walton Enterprises LTD
Bill Gates, who held the top spot on Forbes’ list of the world’s richest people for 13 consecutive years, owes much of his long-term status as the world’s richest man to his family office, Cascade Investment.
Cascade Investment was established in Kirkland, USA, in 1995. Under the leadership of Michael Larson, Cascade Investment has successfully diversified risks, achieved value growth, and continuously optimized the wealth structure of the Gates family.
According to data from Bloomberg, Gates’ net worth is approximately $142.3 billion, of which $118 billion is managed by Larson. The investment portfolio covers stocks, private equity funds, energy, hotels, farms, and venture capital, involving industries such as biotechnology, railway operations, content copyright, energy, and land. The investment targets include world-renowned companies such as Apple and Coca-Cola.
Michael Dell, the founder of Dell Inc., took the company public at the age of 23. Subsequently, he became the youngest CEO among the world’s top 500 companies, earning the admiration of Bill Gates, the president of IT giant Microsoft.
In 2013, with the help of his old friend Bill Gates and Silver Lake private equity, Michael Dell borrowed tens of billions of dollars, overcame objections, and “bought back” the company from Wall Street, completing one of the most astonishing privatization deals in IT history. Since then, Dell has held a dominant position in high-performance storage and virtualization businesses with seven major business groups, including EMC (Easy Assurance), VMware, Pivotal, and SecureWorks, grasping the core lifeline of the entire enterprise information service.
MSD Capital played a key role in this process. In 2013, under the leadership of MSD Capital, Michael Dell resisted acquisition proposals from investment institutions opposed to Dell’s privatization and completed a $24.9 billion Dell privatization deal.
MSD Capital was established in 1998, with its headquarters in New York, and has offices in Santa Monica, California, and West Palm Beach, Florida.
MSD Capital manages the assets of Michael Dell and his family. Since its establishment in 1998, MSD Capital has completed a series of investment layouts and influential transactions on behalf of the Dell family, serving as their loyal support and wealth manager.
02 Bezos Expedition
Bayshore Global Management is a single-family office serving Google co-founder Sergey Brin. Its headquarters are located in Los Altos, California, and the team consists mostly of former bankers and philanthropy experts.
Sergey Brin, born in 1973, is a Russian-American entrepreneur. While studying at Stanford, Sergey met his future business partner, Larry Page. The two discovered that the search method for large data sets needed optimization, so they developed an efficient querying technology and co-founded Google in 1998.
Bayshore Global Management manages a family fortune of over $30 billion and is a major player in the real estate industry in the Los Altos area, operating the real estate company Passerelle Investment Co. and the Brin Wojcicki Foundation.
Emerson Collective LLC was founded by Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Steve Jobs, in Palo Alto, California, in 2004, with assets under management reaching $26 billion.
It is reported that Laurene once worked as a fixed income trading strategy analyst at Goldman Sachs. In March 2022, the Laurene Powell Jobs family ranked 73rd on the Hurun Global Rich List with a net worth of 140 billion yuan.
Emerson Collective LLC is not a typical family office but a social innovation organization. Its mission is to benefit the public, investing and advocating for issues such as immigration reform, environmental protection, school improvement, media, and journalism. It focuses on philanthropy, impact investing, and policy solutions to promote social and community change and advocate for social justice.
When asked what she hopes Emerson Collective can achieve, Laurene said, “We strive to create equal opportunities and hope that because of our existence, the world can be improved.”
03 Waterfall Investment
Euclidean Capital is a company that provides services to individuals and families, established in New York in 2009. The company’s president is Ashvin Chhabra, who has served as the Chief Investment Officer of Merrill Lynch Wealth Management and is also the author of “The Aspirational Investor.”
According to Bloomberg, Euclidean Capital has supported at least six artificial intelligence companies, covering fields such as healthcare, customer service, and aviation.
In 2021, Euclidean Capital joined the financing of data privacy company Duality Technologies. It also participated in the financing of the aviation data management platform DroneBase, which also uses artificial intelligence for analysis.
As of the end of September 2021, the company holds equity in more than a dozen publicly traded companies, valued at approximately $170 million. These include healthcare companies Alector, PMV Pharmaceuticals, and RAPT Therapeutics.
Vulcan Inc. is an investment company founded in 1986 by former Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and his sister Jody Allen, headquartered in Seattle, USA. The company’s investment areas are extensive, covering media, transportation, retail, internet and technology, education, and consumer industries.
The company’s subsidiary, Vulcan Aerospace, is committed to researching space programs, aiming to meet the needs of space travel while reducing its required costs. Vulcan Real Estate is a real estate developer that has achieved success in sustainable commercial, residential, and retail projects in the Puget Sound region.
The company also provides various asset and project management support for the Allen family and foundations, offering advice on investments in wildlife conservation, ocean health, community, and art philanthropy.
04 MSO capital
KIRKBI, the investment group of the LEGO Group (the parent company), is a company held and invested by the Kirk Kristiansen family. The company invests in bonds, corporate debt, listed stocks, long-term stocks, real estate, and renewable energy.
The goal of KIRKBI is to ensure the continuity of the family’s ownership of the LEGO brand. The company is committed to protecting, developing, and utilizing the LEGO brand in family entity projects, adopting a long-term and responsible investment strategy to ensure a solid financial foundation for family activities, and providing strong support for the family’s private activities, corporate business, and charitable work.
KIRKBI has significant long-term investments in the US internet security system ISS company, the Danish Nilfisk, the Swiss Landis+Gy, and the Italian Falck company.
Point72 Asset Management is an investment firm that provides investment advice and securities management services. In 2014, the Wall Street hedge fund giant SAC Capital Advisors transitioned its investment business to the Point72 Asset Management family office.
At that time, the company was only responsible for managing the private funds of Point72’s founder, Cohen, and did not start managing external investments until 2018.
Point72 Asset Management has over 2,000 employees worldwide, with its headquarters located in Stamford, Connecticut, USA, and branches in New York, Singapore, London, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Paris, Sydney, and Palo Alto.
The official website shows that as of July 1, 2022, Point72’s assets under management reached $26.1 billion.
05 Bay shore Global Management
Overseas, family offices have developed for over a century and have formed a very mature industry. Especially in Europe and America, family offices have become a common choice for the super-rich.
Domestically, as family wealth accumulates to a certain extent, some wealthy families in China have gradually begun to have awareness of risk aversion by diversifying their main business, as well as attempts at diversified investment.
I believe that in the near future, Chinese family offices will also be able to occupy a place in the global rankings!
