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.
Staging Twelve real comments selected for your approval. Commenter names are not shown.
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
Marco Poon, a third-generation member of a major Hong Kong business-owning family, tells a story about risk that frames this conversation with Michael Macfarlane. A few years ago he recommended that his family invest in US bonds, a choice any private bank would have endorsed as very safe and very liquid. The older generation asked whether he had ever seen the balance sheet of the country issuing them. Poon says he realised he had been applying an institutional lens to a family thinking 100 or 200 years ahead, and he remains glad his idea was rejected.
From there the discussion turns to the gap between what families need and what banks are designed to provide. Poon argues that families arrive with a bracket of needs, including governance and charity, while banks are built around investment revenue, which creates a direct conflict of interest. He describes the peer community in Hong Kong where second- and third-generation family members share experience on governance, tax, charity and teaching children about money, observing that each family is unique but faces similar challenges. He also explains why outside work and entrepreneurship help make successors battle ready.
The final part of the conversation looks outward. Poon attributes China's progress in AI, automation and new energy to a clear national plan, energy infrastructure built in advance and the pairing of government backing with enterprise effort, and points to Chinese electric vehicles that rival imports. He sees large opportunities in power grid modernisation, including in Japan. He closes by describing JCP, the fiduciary advisory business he founded on a net-fee model, and his view that families must pass down values, stories and an understanding that they manage the family's wealth without owning it.
Poon argues that families and institutions measure risk on different clocks. A private bank may call an investment low risk because its volatility is acceptable over one, five or ten years. A family trying to safeguard resources for 100 or 200 years feels risk very differently, and may prefer assets whose volatility it can ride out to something that looks safe today but may look very different in the long run.
When Poon proposed US Treasuries, the older generation asked whether he had seen the country's balance sheet. He concluded that his elders had lived through multiple cycles, knew that what they were once taught was safe could go wrong, and treated geopolitics as central to risk. Time frame and geopolitical concern, he says, are the two core parts of how a family analyses risk.
In Poon's account, families bring banks a bracket of needs covering investment, governance, charity and more. Banks are designed around investment, earning revenue from product commissions and trading. Staff KPIs, he says, centre on portfolio revenue, so anything else is an additional cost unless the family pays. Raising family governance with a private banker, he adds, produces a silence in which you can hear a pin drop.
Poon describes a Hong Kong community where family members, mostly second and third generation, discuss governance, tax, trends in charity and how to teach children about money. He attributes its strength to an existing family office community, strong academic research on family offices and Hong Kong's position as an Asian hub. He takes ideas back to his family and to his own household.
Poon sees two routes to preparing heirs. Some families require a period in a third-party organisation, so successors learn what a 9-to-5 job, pressure and chasing a sales order feel like. Others fund an entrepreneurial project, which can extend the core business and train the family's people. His own family let him pursue entrepreneurship, which he says helped him understand the operational challenges they face.
Poon describes family capital as different from institutional capital in one important respect. Families may have no fixed investment horizon at all, which suits startups and industries that take a long time to grow. He cites infrastructure, where construction alone may take years and the benefits extend over decades, and sees a global need to overhaul power grids to meet the energy demands of AI.
Poon founded JCP to improve the quality of families' decision-making. He describes a fiduciary, net-fee model in which commissions offered by banks are disclosed to the family and negotiated away to reduce its net cost. JCP helps families establish investment committees, trains them to make decisions within them, and offers education and succession planning, so investments are judged against the family's own objectives.
They know that nothing is completely safe for the entirety of time.
— Marco Poon, Wealth Office
The next generation should know the struggle of the previous generation. Without that, they cannot be humbled enough to understand that they are just managing the family wealth. They don't own it.
— Marco Poon, Wealth Office
It is about ensuring the survival of the families. It's about cultivating the next generation. It's about developing the family into the next platform.
— Marco Poon, Wealth Office
Whatever I learned, I try to implement back in the family.
— Marco Poon, Wealth Office
Our core objective is to help family to make the best decision they can.
— Marco Poon, Wealth Office
Quotes are taken word for word from the episode transcript.
Poon proposed US Treasuries as a safe, liquid investment that private banks would have endorsed. The older generation asked whether he had seen the balance sheet of the issuing country. He concluded that he had used an institutional lens, while his elders weighed geopolitics and a far longer time horizon. He says he is glad they rejected the idea.
He says families approach banks with needs that include governance and charity as well as investment, while banks are designed to earn revenue from products and trading. Because staff are measured on portfolio revenue, other services become a cost. He argues this creates a direct conflict of interest and makes family governance a subject bankers avoid.
Poon emphasises education, values and the older generation's stories of struggle, so heirs understand they manage the family's wealth without owning it. He describes two practical routes to making successors battle ready: working in a third-party organisation before joining the family, or running a family-funded entrepreneurial project. He also stresses support for family members' well-being.
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.
Email [email protected]