For Elaine Chow, managing partner of Trinity Capital, investment is largely a matter of reading cycles. Her conversation with Michael Macfarlane ranges from refinancing and real estate to Chinese outbound acquisitions, Hong Kong's standing as a financial centre and the demographic forces she believes shape economies. Taken together, her views offer a picture of how one Hong Kong family office thinks about where opportunity lies.

Steady capital is still active capital

Macfarlane opens with an observation from his own work. Fund managers he has spoken to recently are less worried about cyclical businesses, which they feel they can price, and more concerned about apparently resilient businesses exposed to sudden technological disruption. He cites software subscription businesses whose tools AI has made effectively free.

Chow's answer holds both possibilities. Family offices, she says, should hold steady, relatively low-yield investments, such as high-yield stocks or companies with very good balance sheets, to secure cash flow. She adds a qualification that is easy to overlook. In bad times these companies will need refinancing, and a significant investor has to talk to the banks.

It's not just passive investing. There's a lot of work to do.

— Elaine Chow, Wealth Office

On cyclical businesses, she notes that financing is now widely available and that businesses can scale beyond their home countries. Her office keeps less than 10% in what she calls risk opportunities, including pre-IPO technology, historically in US companies and more recently in local fintech, often alongside family offices that are well versed in the sector. She is open about not being a technology expert herself.

Buying when the cycle bottoms

Real estate is a significant category for Trinity, and Chow describes a value-led approach. The office looks for places where the economic cycle is bottoming out, for low interest rates because borrowing costs matter, and for distressed assets to which it can add value. It has carried out land acquisition and repositioning in Sydney and worked in London, later exiting to institutions as part of the cycle. The approach applies across residential, commercial and mixed use.

Hong Kong currently has distressed offices, and Chow sees value in converting them for medical purposes, potentially building them into a medical REIT, or for entertainment and experiential uses. She regards commercial property as slower to recover, since many retail businesses are no longer relevant, and residential as the safer choice. She points to below-market residential in Hong Kong and to build-to-rent, which she describes as providing family offices with steady income while giving families space to live. Long-held assets that create cash flow sit alongside a smaller portion of shorter-term positions.

Capital moving outward from China

Macfarlane suggests that much of the Western world underestimates the scale of Chinese family wealth now looking abroad. Chow sees the next generation in particular, who are internationally exposed, going out to acquire businesses and bringing home technology, branding and traditions of how things are done. Her example is the technique behind an intricately woven sweater. In her account, these buyers go beyond bringing back a brand and use their own technology to evolve it into something else. She repeats a figure she has heard in other interviews, that at least half of AI programmers come from China, and describes them as hardworking and a force to be reckoned with.

A hub shaped by law, access and age

Chow calls Hong Kong the best place to have been born for her generation and the next. Its past as part of the UK gave it international exposure, and since its return to China it has also drawn on resources from the mainland. She lists favourable taxation, accessible conditions for setting up a business, common law and deal flow. She was told by the chairman of the Hong Kong exchange that the city now has over 300 IPOs a year, which she says has superseded London. She also describes Hong Kong as one of the biggest marketplaces for art, noting that demand continued for pieces of 10 million or more even during COVID, and that auction houses have moved from offices into retail spaces that now resemble museums.

Her most distinctive argument concerns population. She attributes the economic struggles of fundamentally wealthy places such as Japan and Europe partly to falling birth rates, which stall domestic consumption, and expects population growth to make countries such as China, Indonesia, India and parts of Africa the next big thing. She contrasts an average age of 20 to 30 in Africa with 45 to 65 in Hong Kong.

We're becoming like Switzerland and in a good way.

— Elaine Chow, Wealth Office

The Greater Bay Area matters to her because it brings younger talent within reach of Hong Kong without the burden of the city's high living costs, allowing resources to be shared. She expects more collaboration between countries on labour and growth. For a family office, her outlook combines patience with cycles and close attention to where people, capital and rule of law are converging.