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
Real comments left under Wealth Office episodes on YouTube, quoted exactly as written. Collected weekly; a comment appears only after the team approves it.
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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
Michael Macfarlane begins with a large question. If the 20th century was dominated by Western cultural institutions, could Asia and Africa increasingly shape the global cultural conversation in the 21st? Lady Linda Wong Davies, who founded the KT Wong Foundation in memory of her father, a Chinese Malaysian entrepreneur, thinks it is too soon to speak of a Western sunset. She describes her foundation's mission as a two-way highway, carrying culture into China and out of it, and dates the world's awakening to modern China to the Beijing Olympics.
Wong Davies argues that Chinese culture survives through change, absorbing what it sees and evolving it into something of its own. She illustrates the point with projects from nearly two decades of work. A leading Beijing theatre company took a Mandarin Coriolanus to the Edinburgh Festival, with two rock bands standing in for the battle scenes. The National Theatre's Frankenstein reached Chinese cinema screens after three and a half years of trying to satisfy the censors. Handel's Semele was reimagined by the artist Zhang Huan around a reconstructed 500-year-old Ming temple, and Benjamin Britten's Noah's Flood was staged with Chinese lanterns carried by children.
The conversation then turns to the role of the patron. Wong Davies says cultural exchange cannot be done through layers of bureaucracy, and that patrons need passion, conviction and pragmatism about legacy. She stresses empathy for the audience and stories with universal resonance over big names. Macfarlane asks whether culture could help make today's shift in global power less destructive than past transitions. Wong Davies answers that cultural platforms, more than statistics, change minds, and that beyond material needs, it is the soul that needs feeding.
Wong Davies describes the KT Wong Foundation's mission as engaging cultural platforms between China and the rest of the world, in both directions. She founded it as China was coming out of cultural isolation, and believes the world sat up during the Beijing Olympics. She thinks it is too soon to call the end of Western dominance in the arts, while seeing a far more confident Chinese culture today.
In Wong Davies's account, Chinese dynasties survived through change. Chinese culture takes what it sees, including Western influences that arrive through the internet and travel, and evolves it into something of its own. She has watched this over 19 years in food, fashion, art, music and design, sometimes through strange early configurations, toward a culture that distils its own essence and is confident in its aesthetic values.
The foundation brought the National Theatre's Frankenstein to China because its questions about invention and ethics matched China's own industrial revolution. Familiarity helped. Danny Boyle was known for Trainspotting, and Benedict Cumberbatch for Sherlock. The censors had no category for a filmed play, so after three and a half years she hired a private art cinema, with the British Council as partner. Demand crashed the British Council's website.
Wong Davies prefers the word fusion to Macfarlane's blend. For Handel's Semele, she asked Zhang Huan, who had never been to an opera, to direct and design it. He set it around a 500-year-old Ming temple reconstructed without nails. It opened in Brussels and has since been performed in Canada, New York and Shanghai. A Mandarin Coriolanus at the Edinburgh Festival showed a similar exchange at work.
For Britten's children's opera Noah's Flood, Wong Davies had a British team draw on a V&A volume of 19th-century illustrations by Chinese artists in Guangzhou, and commissioned paper and bamboo lanterns from Chinese lantern makers. Children carried them at Belfast Zoo during the London Olympics cultural programme, then in Beijing and Shanghai. She presented the biblical story as one about water, since every great civilisation has a flood story.
Wong Davies argues that cultural exchange cannot work through layers of bureaucracy. A patron needs passion, no fear and belief in the work. She also urges pragmatism about legacy, understanding what the other side needs and whether the audience will grasp the message. Big names sell only up to a point. Empathy, education and finding what both cultures can understand are what create real cultural understanding.
Asked about the bigger picture, Wong Davies names a better understanding of each other's cultures, along with economic and creative opportunity. Health and feeding people are critical, she says, but beyond them it is the soul that needs feeding. She finds AI enthralling but believes it will lack humanity. Her reward is young musicians telling her a production helped them pursue their ambition.
Seriously, what changes people's mindsets? What changes people's heart? It's not through a set of demographics or graphs or statistics. It's cultural platforms.
— Lady Linda Wong Davies, Wealth Office
And that's the key, I feel, about Chinese culture. It doesn't stay still, it evolves. It takes the best that it can see and then it, you know, evolves into its own.
— Lady Linda Wong Davies, Wealth Office
I'm not telling anybody what to think, I'm just presenting it.
— Lady Linda Wong Davies, Wealth Office
When you reach children, you will reach their parents and their uncles and their grandmothers.
— Lady Linda Wong Davies, Wealth Office
But beyond that, it's the soul that you need to feed.
— Lady Linda Wong Davies, Wealth Office
Quotes are taken word for word from the episode transcript.
Lady Linda Wong Davies founded the KT Wong Foundation in memory of her father nearly 19 years ago. Its mission is to create cultural platforms that engage China with the rest of the world, in both directions. Its projects have included bringing the National Theatre's Frankenstein to Chinese audiences, a reimagined Handel opera and a children's opera staged with Chinese lanterns.
She thinks it is too soon to say that Western dominance over the arts is facing its sunset. She does believe China is now far more confident in its own aesthetic values, and that work shaped by Chinese artists has already found acclaim in Europe and America. She prefers to describe what is happening as fusion between cultures.
Wong Davies starts with passion, but says passion alone will not lead to a goal. Reaching it needs study and introspection, and mistakes are inevitable at first. She urges pragmatism about the legacy one wants to leave and whether it will help further generations. Her own reward is young musicians who say a production helped them pursue their ambition.
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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