North American Family Offices Target Asia Pacific Investments
ASIA PACIFIC – Family offices across the world, especially those based in North America, are planning to boost their investments in Asia Pacific (APAC), including in properties, reported AsianInvestor on Thursday evening (18 November, SGT).
According to the Asia Pacific edition of The Global Family Office Report by Raffles Family Office and Campden Wealth that was published on Wednesday, about 54 percent of 385 family offices polled said they intend to increase their investments in the region.
In particular, 77 percent of family offices in Asia Pacific and 48 percent of those in North America said they plan to do so.
The research involved single and private family offices. Private family offices are defined as those servicing up to 8 families, but about half of their funds are owned by just 1 family.
On the other hand, 45 percent of the surveyed family offices plan to boost their investments in North America, while 34 percent intend to do so in Europe. Merely 13 percent are considering to allocate further capital into emerging economies.
“Europe is regarded as providing jurisdictional certainty, which is great and not something to be underestimated… But it’s not where they go to invest their money for the growth of their portfolio. Asia’s numbers are pretty compelling, “commented Campden Wealth’s Director for Asia Pacific, Nick Hayward.
He added that in talks with customers and other industry insiders, “there is a huge amount of interest in Asia all the time,” especially for family offices based in the United States.
Specifically, China is a favoured investment destination, with 45 percent of family offices polled already have made investments there, with an additional 14 percent planning to enter the market. However, family offices prefer to invest in China via funds rather than directly.
“We don’t understand it, it’s too complicated for us, too risky. However, we like the macroeconomic climate, so we have one co-investment in a data centre. This is a one-off,” a co-founder of single-family office in Singapore explained
“We co-invested with one of our real estate funds and it is ticking several boxes. We would never have done that alone,” added the investor.
