S'pore, HK should join forces to court super rich: Experts

Collaboration between cities can provide access, enlarge current family office circles

- Angela Tan

Singapore and Hong Kong are often seen as rivals in the high-stakes world of family offices which serve the super rich, but this can lead to missed opportunities for collaboration, experts said.

This view fails to recognise that single family offices (SFOs), or firms that manage the wealth of a single family, do not just operate in one location.

Some have offices in both Singapore and Hong Kong and other financial centres too, experts from the School of Business and Management of The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology said on July 11.

“SFOs often diversify their assets across different parts of the world, necessitating the establishment of subsidiaries or branch offices to manage their assets locally,” said Professor Winnie Peng, director at the Roger King Centre for Asian Family Business and Family Offices at the university.

A survey conducted by the centre from August 2022 to August 2023 found that a third of the SFOs had multiple office locations and the rest, a single location.