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
Shield Xiao Dun is a Chinese education technology entrepreneur who co-founded 17 Education & Technology Group (17EdTech, also known as 17zuoye), a K-12 online learning company that listed on Nasdaq in 2020, and who now works on AI tutors in California.
Xiao Dun was born into a modest middle-class family in Beijing. Scholarships took him abroad, and the Hong Kong businessman William Louey, himself a Wealth Office guest, paid for his schooling at Millfield in England and most of his tuition at the University of Cambridge. He studied engineering, specialising in artificial intelligence, and holds a master's degree in electrical and information engineering from Cambridge. He has also studied at MIT and Harvard.
Before turning to education, he worked on the organisation of the Beijing and London Olympic and Paralympic Games and as a derivatives trader at UBS. He also co-founded Dun & Huang, an early developer of education apps for Apple's App Store.
Xiao Dun co-founded 17zuoye in 2011, at the age of 26, and served as its president. The company began as an online homework platform for school pupils and grew into one of China's largest K-12 education technology businesses. The World Economic Forum's profile of him records that it served more than 80 million users in over 140,000 schools in China, backed by investors including Tiger Global, Temasek, DST, Shunwei, CITIC, Toutiao and ZhenFund. The company grew to around 20,000 employees, listed on Nasdaq in 2020 under the ticker YQ and reached a valuation of about US$5 billion.
Its growth rested on the gap between China's demand for good schooling and the supply of strong teachers outside the largest cities, and on the spread of mobile phones and faster networks. In 2021 China's double reduction policy on after-school tutoring forced the company into a difficult change of direction.
Xiao Dun has since moved to Palo Alto, where he is building AI tutors intended to adapt to each learner at a fraction of the cost of the best human teaching. Speaker listings for the ASU+GSV Summit describe him as working at ASI, a company whose mission is to give every student in the world a personalised AI tutor. He has served on the boards of several education-related non-profit organisations.
Xiao Dun appeared on Wealth Office in the episode "What Does a $5bn EdTech Founder Build After 30?". In conversation with Michael Macfarlane he described how William Louey's support, given without conditions, shaped his decision to work in education, and how Louey later recommended the film Pay It Forward to the scholars he had sponsored. He traced the rise of 17EdTech, the effect of the 2021 policy change and his move to AI tutoring, and predicted that assessment will shift towards mastery and real-world output. The discussion also covered China's technological strength, why leading Chinese technology companies have listed in the United States, the value of clear and stable policy, and two outcomes of AI he fears: people kept consuming without growing, and a small group controlling compute and strategic decisions. He set out a preferred model of society shaped like a cactus, with many branches and many peaks, and returned throughout to the idea that purpose stays fixed while a company is the vehicle for it.
Shield Xiao Dun built a $5bn Chinese EdTech company from a scholarship he was given. He explains why AI tutors are his next attempt to pay it forward.
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]