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.
Fourth-generation head of the Kowloon Motor Bus family, philanthropist and scholarship founder
Biography
William Louey is a Hong Kong businessman and philanthropist, the fourth-generation figurehead of the family behind the Kowloon Motor Bus Company and the founder of the William S.D. Louey Educational Foundation. His full name is William Louey Lai Kuen.
The Kowloon Motor Bus Company was founded in 1921 by his grandfather and has grown into one of Hong Kong's principal public transport operators, carrying around 2.8 million passengers a day. Louey was educated in the United Kingdom, where he took a BSc(Econ) and spent five years with an international merchant bank and three years with an international accounting firm. He returned to Hong Kong at the request of his grandmother, Alice Louey, following bereavements in the family.
Responsibility for the family's position passed to him at a young age. Rather than run the business day to day, he chose to appoint professional management and serve as a board director, representative and communicator for the company. According to company filings, he has been a director of The Kowloon Motor Bus Company (1933) Limited since 1993, of Long Win Bus Company since 1997 and of the listed parent, Transport International Holdings, since 1997, where he is a non-executive director and a member of the Standing Committee. He has spoken of the value of outside professionals running the company and of the KMB passenger app, which shows bus arrival times. He is also chairman of Hong Kong Construction (Technology) and a founding member of JNW Properties.
In 1995 Louey founded an educational foundation named in memory of his grandfather, William Sui-tak Louey. It funds academically gifted students from disadvantaged backgrounds, mainly from mainland China and Hong Kong, to study at leading British and American schools and universities, including Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard and MIT. The first scholars, from Beijing, were interviewed and selected by Louey in person. The foundation has supported more than 60 scholars and asks only that they help others in turn, a principle it calls "pay it forward". In 2015 former scholars set up a Pay It Forward scholarship under the China Oxford Scholarship Fund.
Louey joined the committee of the China Oxford Scholarship Fund in 1999 and served on the executive committee of the Friends of Cambridge University in Hong Kong from 2003 to 2012. He became a member of the University of Oxford's Vice-Chancellor's Circle in 2011 and received the Elizabeth Wordsworth Fellowship from St Hugh's College, Oxford, in 2013.
In recent years Louey has created content on health, longevity and leadership. He presents the YouTube series Growing Young with William Louey and the podcast Reaching Your Peak, and he has contributed opinion pieces to the Forbes Business Council and Entrepreneur.
William Louey appeared on Wealth Office in the episode "Why This 4th Generation Hong Kong Heir Chose Purpose Over Power" with Michael Macfarlane. He explained why he stepped back from management to act as a figurehead, and how his grandmother's charitable work shaped him from the age of seven. He spoke candidly about the partly selfish origins of his scholarship programme and how it became a calling, describing how he still interviews around 150 candidates a year and how some former scholars now fund scholarships themselves, a model Macfarlane called regenerative philanthropy. He also discussed ownership measured by ability, freedom for the next generation, value over display, and his view that happiness comes from giving.
William Louey, fourth-generation head of Hong Kong's Kowloon Motor Bus family, explains why he stepped back from management and built three decades of self-renewing scholarship philanthropy.
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]