Family offices are forging ahead despite volatility and uncertainty in the markets—increasing their appetite for direct investments in real estate and operating businesses—as they continue to reassess the more traditional approaches to building investment portfolios.
In this 2019 Foresight article, we explore how family enterprises face an increasingly uncertain and risky world owing to developments in the economy, geopolitics, financial markets, technology, and industry competition. We review a wide range of general and specific strategies to mitigate systemic risks.
The FOX Global Investment Survey is designed to aid wealth owners and family office executives in their review of the family's allocation decisions and investment performance each year. This report highlights critical areas as to how families structure their investment decision-making, allocate across their portfolios, staff their investment te...
FOX Foresight – Appeal of Direct Investing shows the growing interest in private company investments. It tells the story of families who are pursuing this opportunity, highlighting the top themes from FOX's research and ongoing conversations with FOX members. It summarizes what we have been learning from the FOX community and our subject matter exp...
This annual FOX survey of investor attitudes and behaviors provides readers with peer perspective from 118 family offices on a wide range of topics, including asset allocation and investment performance, passive versus active investing in long-only equity, 2017 investment trends, benchmarking a multi-asset portfolio, current economic outlook, inves...
Mexico is at a pivotal point in the evolution of its energy markets. In the last few years it has passed reforms to liberalize its oil, gas, and electricity markets with the intent of attracting private investment to build out its energy infrastructure. Driven primarily by increased demand in the electricity sector, Mexico’s natural gas market has ...
FROM “POLYCRISIS” to “POLYOPPORTUNITIES”: In October 2022, in an article in the Financial Times 1, historian Adam Toze brought back into popular use the term “polycrisis” to describe the situation the world was in, with several crises building each other to create an intertwined web of complex disruptions. The developments in mid-March 2023 arou...
The dramatic growth of the family office industry in the 1980s was sparked by new liquidity running through hundreds of business-owning families. In an effort to preserve and expand their wealth, they needed a professional financial office so they could focus on broadening their business endeavors or living unencumbered lives. Over the past 40 y...
Investing in direct opportunities has become increasingly mainstream, and the evolution of family portfolios over the past 30 years supports that. While direct investing is not new, well-funded and focused competitors are increasingly changing the investing landscape. Families entering into direct opportunities can encounter unfamiliar and even uns...
Whether the sale of your artwork is a remote contingency or it is an immediate need, planning for it will help you and your fiduciaries anticipate the possible risks and opportunities that lie ahead. This guide leads you through the steps and takes you to the opportunities that exist when artwork, and the associated intellectual property ...
Private investors including family offices can be great investors, but many are not. They have some big competitive advantages over institutional investors which live with significant constraints imposed by law, stakeholders, media and regulators. Private investors are usually less constrained, but often fail to recognize and exploit their competit...
Having observed private investors at work over many years, authors Jonny Lach and Sara Hamilton see some clear patterns separating the most successful family investors from others. They offer some of the lessons learned, including the advantages and challenges that family investors face.
One of the greatest direct investing struggles is how to manage deal flow once opportunities start to come in. It sounds simple enough, but it is quite actually complex – in ways that might surprise you. Mainly, once word gets out you’re looking to invest, you’ll be inundated with opportunities. So before you work with your network to surface deals...
Enterprise families are unique because they share ownership and stewardship of more than just family businesses. In addition to co-owning operating companies, they are the guardians of family legacy, family trusts, shared philanthropy, and joint properties. As leadership moves from founders to siblings to cousins and family priorities change, the d...
At some point, your family wealth may be so complex, or a significant transition happens that starts a process to form an independent family office outside of the business. Whatever the reason, separating family wealth management from the business should be considered an evolutionary process and starts with your family gaining consensus to establis...