Chinese family offices that manage the funds for the country's technology billionaires “have become an important source of capital and an early port of call for venture capitalists, hedge funds and private equity firms” as sovereign wealth funds have less money to invest and U.S. tech investors are becoming more cautious,
Financial Times
columnist Henny Sender wrote.
In some ways, Sender wrote, the Chinese tech families “resemble the U.S. robber baron families of an earlier century, because they combine an aggressive, monopolistic drive for financial success with a desire to engage in philanthropy.”
A previous generation of wealthy Chinese families were involved in real estate and shipping. The new generation of family offices includes Blue Pool Capital of Hong Kong, which manages part of the wealth of Jack Ma and his partner Joe Tsai. “Mr. Ma also uses other vehicles, including his Yunfeng Capital, and a new family office that takes up an entire floor of a Hong Kong office tower,” Sender wrote.
A Chinese family office is often “an extension of [the family's] public company rather than an effort to diversify away from the core business,” Sender wrote. (Source:
Financial Times
, March 30, 2016.)
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