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
Michael Macfarlane opens with a proverb: society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they will never sit in. Nicolas de Santis, an early dot-com founder who co-founded Opodo and helped launch one of the first digital currencies, answers that humanity is doing both, with some parts of society building a more sustainable world while others pursue exploitation and short-termism. His work now centres on visioneering, which he defines as the ability to explore and create the future, drawing on imagination and even science fiction narratives. For families, he argues, it is a way to reinterpret mission and purpose beyond the limits of their own past.
De Santis calls the current AI boom a bubble, as in many technology cycles, while noting that AI has been taught in computer science for decades. He urges families to look at the world's great challenges, such as longevity, as the source of future industries, and to seek disruptive innovation. He then sets out his three planetary futures: maximum human potential through cooperative global governance, stagnation driven by nation-state thinking, and self-destruction through conflict. All three, he says, are happening today and all depend on technology. His prescription is a new level of global governance, which he distinguishes sharply from global government, and a federal idea the world could share.
The conversation ranges across Macfarlane's critique of the UK as a place to build a business, de Santis's view that capital is global and entrepreneurs must now use several locations, and his conviction that Asia is ahead in thinking about the future. He describes energy as being like oxygen and argues that complexity must be embraced if anything of value is to be built. His advice to a 25-year-old heir is simple: get your hands dirty and focus on value creation.
Nicolas de Santis defines visioneering as the ability of a person or organisation to explore and create the future, using imagination and science fiction narratives to conceive things that do not yet exist. He argues that thinking only about the past and present limits potential. In his experience, family strategy meetings rarely look far enough ahead, and visioneering helps a family reinterpret its mission and purpose for the future.
Drawing on his dot-com experience, de Santis describes recurring cycles of technological development, with AI the latest. He points out that AI has been part of computer science courses for around 30 years. Asked directly whether the current boom is a bubble, he answers yes, explaining that bubbles form in many industries because everyone wants to make something out of the new opportunity.
De Santis offers families two lenses for new ventures. The first is to look at the challenges the world faces, such as longevity, because solving them creates large industries. The second is disruptive innovation, either improving something that exists or creating something entirely new. Opodo, he says, disrupted travel distribution by connecting directly to hotels, car hire firms and airlines, while the digital currency project created something without precedent.
His Planetary Futures work maps three trajectories: maximum human potential, stagnation and self-destruction. De Santis stresses that all three are visible today and all use technology. Stagnation, in his description, is a world that invests more in war than in health. He suggests that families may own businesses still generating cash but no longer fit for purpose, and could direct future investment towards challenges they can help solve.
De Santis argues that the maximum-potential future requires cooperative global governance aimed at shared goals such as curing cancer and Alzheimer's and ending hunger. He notes that nation states are relatively recent, believes the UN is no longer fit for purpose and favours a federal model in which nations remain independent but contribute to a common vision. He is explicit that he does not want a global government.
De Santis has no doubt that Asia is looking at the future differently and is ahead in that thinking. He argues that China has learned from the West and now applies those lessons better, helped by a different form of governance and decades of investment abroad. He links this to vision more broadly, noting that energy infrastructure requires decisions decades in advance and that energy has become as vital as oxygen.
Asked what a 25-year-old from a wealthy family should do, de Santis says his answer might surprise. He would want to get his hands dirty, and sees a willingness to work hard as already positive, given how many wealthy heirs do not. He urges young people to draw on the values that built their family's success, to focus on value creation over capital accumulation, and to study the areas that interest them deeply.
So visioneering is also an attitude to the world. If you just think about the past and the present, you're limited in terms of what your potential is.
— Nicolas de Santis, Wealth Office
So for us, visioneering is a way for a family to reinterpret their mission and purpose towards the future.
— Nicolas de Santis, Wealth Office
So I believe that even if you say I'm thinking big, think much bigger. Because the dimension of what you want to build will then dictate the ambition of your challenge.
— Nicolas de Santis, Wealth Office
I don't say global government, I say global governance. We don't want a global government.
— Nicolas de Santis, Wealth Office
So to me the answer is get your hands dirty, go and study the areas that you're interested in and make a dent in the world.
— Nicolas de Santis, Wealth Office
Quotes are taken word for word from the episode transcript.
De Santis describes visioneering as the ability of a person or organisation to explore and create the future, using imagination and science fiction narratives to conceive things that do not yet exist and then build them with technology and processes. He calls it an attitude to the world and a critical component of strategy, particularly for families whose planning is limited by their past.
De Santis maps three trajectories: maximum human potential through cooperative global governance and ethical technology, human stagnation in which short-term crises and nation-state thinking prevail, and self-destruction through conflict and collapse. He argues that all three are happening simultaneously today and that technology is used in each. Which one dominates depends on whether humanity can agree a common vision.
He tells them to get their hands dirty. In his view a willingness to work is already a positive sign. He advises drawing on the values that built the family's success, focusing on value creation over capital accumulation, asking what can be improved, such as healthcare, with new technologies, and studying the areas that interest them in depth.
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]