Independent media for the global private client world
Wealth Office is a long-form interview series with the founders, families and private capital holders reshaping the world. Filmed in London's great rooms. Published across Western and Chinese platforms.
The guest's chairEvery Wealth Office conversation is filmed on location in London. The chair is the only seat a guest is offered.
The Wealth Office audience this week
Subscribers and followers across all platforms
Checked 12 Oct 2026. Updated every Monday.
What we are building
Wealth Office is building the independent media brand for the families and principals who hold private capital, and for the advisers, institutions and creators who serve them. Long-form conversations filmed in London's great rooms, published in six languages across Western and Chinese platforms, and organised into the ideas that shape how wealth is held, passed on and put to work.
Wealth Office Insights
Essays drawn from what Wealth Office guests have said on the record. New essays follow every new episode.
News
Briefs on billionaires, family offices and private capital from Bloomberg, Forbes, the South China Morning Post and more. All news
Series architecture
Both series are filmed to the same production standard, in the same rooms, by the same team.
Editorial · Never sponsoredOne-on-one conversations exclusively with private capital-holding principals, authors and academics. The focus is their perspective, and how private capital is building the new world across business, technology, philanthropy and culture.
Exchange · Sometimes sponsoredTwo globally recognised leaders explore one subject where power, risk and long-term consequence intersect. Issue-led dialogue that stress-tests an idea or proposition.
Wealth Office X is where paid collaboration lives. It is always editorially led, never an advertisement in interview form.
The recurring questions
Ranked by how often each theme recurs across the episode library. Each theme has its own page that grows with every new episode.
In the chair
Every guest has a profile page drawing together their episodes, clips and the ideas they put on the record.
Behind the camera
The hosts, producers and strategists who make Wealth Office, in London, Hong Kong and Mumbai. Full biographies
From the comments
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Hosts
Based in London, Michael is a close adviser to some of the world's most ambitious private capital holders, with particular depth across Asia's major business families and family offices. His work sits at the intersection of media, reputation and the relationships shaping this era of private wealth. He is Principal Partner of Michael Macfarlane Associates, which produces Wealth Office.
About the seriesBased in Mumbai. Former South Asia Bureau Chief for the Daily Telegraph and host of The Diplomat's Beyond the Indus podcast, with over a decade advising UHNWIs and family offices across India and South Asia.
Based in Hong Kong. Moves between Western and Greater China circles in English, Mandarin and Cantonese, with long-standing relationships across Asia's family office and private client world.
Published in long, mid and short form
One filmed session becomes a long-form episode, mid-length clips and short-form cuts in English and Mandarin.
Collaboration partners
Wealth Office X places a firm's expertise inside a trusted, independent private client channel, with long-form authority, multi-platform distribution and content built for how AI now recommends people and firms.
Wealth Office Insights
Essays on private capital, family wealth and the forces reshaping the private client world, drawn from what Wealth Office guests have said on the record.
Episodes
Long-form episodes from both series, with an overview, key ideas and verified quotes for each.
Episode overview
In this Wealth Office X conversation, Michael Macfarlane brings together Lord Bernard Hogan-Howe, former Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police in London, and David Ferbrache OBE, Managing Director of Beyond Blue, to examine cyber risk for private wealth and business-owning families. Macfarlane's opening proposition is that, for these families, cyber risk has become a strategic condition. Capital moves globally and digitally, identity is exposed by default and attacks are increasingly automated. Losses are often irreversible and frequently invisible until it is too late, yet most family offices remain small, trust-based teams relying on a handful of advisers.
Both guests describe a threat that is changing shape. Ferbrache says surveys suggest around a third of family offices experience a cyber incident each year, and that criminal groups are moving from encrypting systems towards stealing data and using it for extortion, sometimes aimed at individual family members. Artificial intelligence is improving their research and their impersonation, from well-crafted phishing lures to simulated voices and video. Hogan-Howe notes that the small size of a family office is reassuring because everyone trusts each other, but that the same trust can amplify an insider threat. Both see next-generation oversharing online as a source of intelligence for criminals, with physical as well as digital consequences.
The discussion then moves from threat to response. Ferbrache argues that cyber security cannot be left to IT alone, and that principals should be involved in thinking through scenarios because the hardest damage to repair is reputational and personal. Hogan-Howe recommends assuming an attack will get through, building trusted relationships before a crisis and knowing exactly whom to call in each jurisdiction. Both describe good security as unobtrusive, allowing a family to travel, associate and do business while the risk is managed around them.
Lord Bernard Hogan-Howe suggests that family offices now hold wealth comparable to institutions, with less infrastructure to protect it. He attributes this to cost rather than carelessness. A lean office buys in the skills it does not hold, and security is one more area where spending is limited. He adds that multiple international bases can offer jurisdictional protection while making an office more vulnerable the more widely it is dispersed.
David Ferbrache OBE describes organised crime groups moving beyond encrypting data for ransom. Increasingly they sample the data they find, work out where they have landed and look for the most effective form of extortion. For family offices that brings reputational as well as financial damage. He also reports attempts to blackmail key executives and family members directly, and says the time between initial compromise and attack is shortening.
Ferbrache says artificial intelligence helps criminals scan many systems quickly and research targets thoroughly, producing credible phishing lures and, at times, simulated video and audio. Impersonation is increasingly the source of damage. He describes law and accountancy firms being compromised so that attackers can email clients with the firms' credibility. Macfarlane calls it a hijacking of trust, and Ferbrache agrees. Hogan-Howe adds that AI is starting to defeat biometric safeguards.
Hogan-Howe recalls a recent case in which a third-party provider noticed that a routine data download, normally fifteen minutes long, had been running for about four hours. The organisation did not treat the warning as seriously as it might have. Such signals are often mistaken for system faults. He argues that staff should be sensitised to unusual signals, because time is the most damaging factor as data and money are lost.
Macfarlane describes older family members who keep a low profile while the next generation shares locations and associations online. Hogan-Howe notes that software can identify where an image was taken, linking cyber risk to physical risks such as kidnap. Ferbrache calls the resulting analysis pattern of life. Neither argues for withdrawing from social media. Ferbrache suggests simple measures, such as avoiding geotagged images and posting after leaving a place.
Ferbrache warns against delegating security to a technical function alone, which disconnects it from what matters to the family. Basic hygiene, often delivered through a managed security provider, still has to be right. The starting point, in his view, is identifying the crown jewels and the worst-case scenarios. Because reputational damage falls on the family, he argues that principals should be involved in thinking those scenarios through.
Hogan-Howe advises assuming that an attack will happen and will get through. He favours an initial assessment of gaps followed by advisers who work alongside the team, describing a relationship more than a contract. He highlights resilience, including deputies during long incidents, and urges principals to ask exactly who would be contacted if an incident struck abroad. If the answer sounds woolly, he says, work is needed.
It's a cost until you need it. It's an investment when the event happens.
— Lord Bernard Hogan-Howe, Wealth Office
My suggestion is on cyber, assume it will happen and that they will get through, because if you think the opposite, then you're probably not going to take it as seriously as you might.
— Lord Bernard Hogan-Howe, Wealth Office
If any part of that system is an insider threat, then in fact that might amplify the threat rather than reduce it.
— Lord Bernard Hogan-Howe, Wealth Office
So cyber for me is now a much, much broader piece. It's about what really matters to you, what are the real assets that are of concern.
— David Ferbrache OBE, Wealth Office
It's a hijacking of trust, exactly.
— David Ferbrache OBE, Wealth Office
Quotes are taken word for word from the episode transcript.
David Ferbrache OBE says most surveys suggest that about a third of family offices experience a cyber incident each year. He adds that incidents now often involve data theft and extortion as well as disruption, with reputational consequences. Michael Macfarlane observes that many incidents are first identified by third parties, such as a bank, which can leave the family behind the curve.
According to Ferbrache, AI lets criminal groups scan systems quickly and research targets in depth, producing well-crafted phishing lures and sometimes deepfake video or audio. Lord Bernard Hogan-Howe notes that AI can replicate a person's voice and appearance, which is starting to defeat biometric safeguards. Both describe a shift towards impersonation and the exploitation of trusted relationships, including those with professional advisers.
Ferbrache argues that it cannot sit with IT alone. In many circumstances he believes the principal should be directly involved, because reputational and personal damage falls on the family. Hogan-Howe suggests principals test their arrangements by asking who exactly would be contacted if an incident occurred abroad. Both recommend specialist advice covering scenarios and response as well as technical protection.
News
Weekly briefs on billionaires, family offices and private capital, drawn from Bloomberg, Forbes, the South China Morning Post and other leading titles, with context for families and their advisers.
About
Wealth Office is an independent media platform built for the private client world, launched in September 2025 and produced in London.
What Wealth Office is
Wealth Office explores the structural forces reshaping the private client world: the rise of private capital, the globalisation of family wealth, the shift of ambition and innovation toward Asia, the psychology of intergenerational stewardship, and the responsibility that comes with significant capital.
The series speaks with the principals themselves: founders, inheritors and long-term holders of capital, together with the authors and academics who study them. It does not cover market commentary or portfolio management. It asks how private wealth is used, governed and passed on, and what it is building.
Wealth Office is hosted by Michael Macfarlane and produced by a dedicated team in London and Hong Kong. Full biographies follow below.
Ultra-high-net-worth individuals, business-owning families, family offices, next-generation wealth holders, founders, and the lawyers, trustees and advisers who serve them.
Michael Macfarlane, Principal Partner of Michael Macfarlane Associates, is the principal host. Joe Wallen in Mumbai and Stephanie Chen in Hong Kong join as hosts.
The Wealth Office series is never sponsored. Wealth Office X episodes may involve a paid collaboration partner and are always editorially led.
On YouTube at @wealthofficeofficial, with clips on Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, Substack, RedNote and Bilibili (as 财富办公室), and audio on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Amazon Music.
Hosts and team
A London-based team with deep relationships across Asia's family offices, and fluency in English, Mandarin and Cantonese.
Wealth Office XWhere paid collaboration lives. Always editorially led.
Collaboration partners
Firms that serve the private client world collaborate with Wealth Office to own a theme: credible, independent, long-form video in front of the audience that matters, in the format AI-driven search now rewards.
The full collaboration brief, packages and audience data. Approved partners receive a one-time sign-in code by email.
Open the partner briefFor collaborations, Wealth Office X, interviews and press, write to us. Tell us about your firm, the theme you would like to own and your timing.
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