Every shift in the global order leaves a trace in how wealth is held and how it is used. Michael Macfarlane opens the Wealth Office series with that idea, and it frames the questions the series asks about private capital, power and purpose.

Wealth has followed power

For centuries, the history of wealth has been closely tied to geopolitics. And for each new age, wealth manifests itself in different ways.

— Michael Macfarlane, Wealth Office

Macfarlane gives two reference points. At the turn of the twentieth century, he says, Great Britain accounted for 2.5% of the global population but held 25% of global wealth. That wealth took a visible form, in grand stately homes and palaces filled with Renaissance art. By the turn of the twenty-first century, on his figures, the USA accounted for 4.2% of the global population and held more than 30% of global wealth.

The comparison links the location of wealth to the distribution of power. In each period a leading nation held a disproportionate share, and its wealth acquired a recognisable character. The British stately home is the clearest image of the earlier pattern. It was fixed in one place, built to last and designed to be seen.

Macfarlane's starting point is that the global order is changing once again. The question that follows is what form wealth takes when the old pattern no longer holds.

Wealth that moves

His answer begins with the observation that wealth is no longer clustered into regions by geopolitics.

We're in a brand new era of highly mobile wealth. We're in the era of the family office, where wealth is less about opulence and more about impact.

— Michael Macfarlane, Wealth Office

Two ideas sit inside that statement. The first is mobility. A family's wealth, in this account, is no longer defined by the national power that surrounds it. The second is the family office as the characteristic institution of the period. Where the stately home expressed wealth as display, Macfarlane presents the family office as a vehicle for activity.

He describes that activity broadly, as impact across business and commerce, investment and philanthropy. The shift he identifies is one of emphasis. In his framing, the defining role of wealth has moved towards what it can set in motion.

This matters at a moment of change for a simple reason. When the established order is in flux, the choices of private capital-holders about where to commit their resources carry more weight. Mobile wealth can choose where it goes, and those choices become part of how the next period takes shape.

Capital at the frontier and in culture

Macfarlane points to two directions in which this capital is moving. He describes a period of tremendous global transformation in which wealth is flowing into innovations and technologies of vast potential impact. Private capital, in that picture, is present at the frontier of change.

The second direction is cultural.

It's flowing into supporting creativity and the arts in ways that are unprecedented.

— Michael Macfarlane, Wealth Office

There is a link with the earlier era here. The palaces of a century ago were filled with Renaissance art, and wealth has long been bound up with culture. What Macfarlane describes is support for creativity and the arts on a scale he regards as without precedent.

Taken together, technology and the arts suggest a view of private wealth as a participant in shaping the future. It funds new capabilities, and it sustains the culture through which societies understand themselves.

Looking behind a private world

The final element of the introduction is a statement of purpose. Macfarlane describes the world of wealth as secretive, and he sets out to lift the veil on it. His stated interest is in how wealth can make the world a more dynamic and more beautiful place.

The method he proposes is conversation. He will speak to wealth holders and wealth creators about their passions and examine the impact they want to have in the world, considering the role of wealth at a moment of great change.

That approach treats the motives of capital-holders as worth understanding in their own right. If wealth is mobile, and if its role is shifting from opulence towards impact, then the intentions of the people who direct it become a significant part of the story of global change. The series begins from the premise that those intentions can be examined openly, and that doing so reveals something about where the world is heading.