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.
Biography
Howard Bilton is a British barrister and entrepreneur who founded The Sovereign Group, an international professional services business specialising in offshore trusts, companies and related tax advice, and who co-founded the Sovereign Art Foundation, a charity that uses art to support disadvantaged children.
Born in Yorkshire, Bilton studied at the University of Keele, where he took a joint honours degree in classics and law. He is a qualified barrister, called to the Bars of England and Wales and of Gibraltar. He started The Sovereign Group in Gibraltar in 1987, working with a single assistant from a back room. In 1992 he moved to Hong Kong, which became the base from which the business grew.
Sovereign describes itself as one of the world's largest privately owned consultancies for offshore trusts, companies and international tax advice. It employs lawyers, accountants and company secretaries, and has grown to around 600 people. Bilton has said the business expanded organically and without borrowing. He remains chairman, having handed the chief executive role to others. He writes regularly on international tax and wealth planning for newsletters and newspapers, including the IFC Review, and is a visiting non-resident professor at Texas A&M University, where he assists with its LLM and master's programmes in international tax and offshore centres.
In 2003 Bilton and his co-director Tiffany Pinkstone formed the Sovereign Art Foundation. It is registered as a charity in Hong Kong, Singapore, Guernsey, South Africa and the United Kingdom, and reports having raised more than US$15 million. Bilton, a long-standing collector of Asian art, has said he set it up after noticing how little of the money spent on art returned to local communities.
The foundation's fundraising model rests on art prizes. Its flagship Sovereign Asian Art Prize is aimed at mid-career contemporary artists nominated by a panel of experts. Finalists' works are exhibited and then sold, with proceeds shared equally between the artist and the foundation, while the winning work enters the foundation's collection. Professional prizes now run in Asia, Africa and Portugal, alongside student prizes in several regions. The Sovereign Group covers the foundation's overheads, so that funds raised go to its programmes. These include Make It Better, an in-house expressive arts programme for children in need in Hong Kong and Portugal, and support for partner charities working with children in the region.
Bilton now lives in Portugal, where he is a partner in Howard's Folly, a winery in Estremoz in the Alentejo, alongside the winemaker David Baverstock. The winery brings together wine, art and charity, and donates part of its revenue to the Sovereign Art Foundation.
Bilton appeared on Wealth Office in the episode "How Entrepreneurial Thinking Can Create A Philanthropy Multiplier Effect". In conversation with Michael Macfarlane he explained how he designed the Sovereign Art Foundation to generate more than it spends, so that the sum he could afford to give is roughly doubled. He described the foundation's three professional prizes, the split of sale proceeds with artists, the staff and expertise contributed by Sovereign across 13 countries, a project in Cambodia supported for 20 years, and a three-year University of Hong Kong study of the art therapy programme. The discussion also covered China's move from low-cost manufacturing to innovation, the speed of decision-making in Asia, growing a business slowly and steadily, the role of AI in professional services, the softness of the art market, and his vineyard, now run with his son Tom, which pledges 20% of its profit to the foundation.
Howard Bilton explains how the Sovereign Art Foundation turns art prizes, collectors and corporate expertise into twice the funding a cheque alone would provide.
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]