A rule that forces reinvention

Allen Law's family has a structural answer to the question of what the next generation should do. Its rule of one family member in one business unit means that as the family grows, each new member needs something new to lead. Over three generations that pushed the family from garment manufacturing into real estate, then hotels, then fitness and now longevity, where Law is building Morrow, a chain of lifestyle medical centres. He also describes how the family funds that reinvention, keeping part of its wealth in a traditional portfolio and reserving a separate pool for higher-risk entrepreneurial bets.

Law is candid that family backing has drawbacks as well as advantages. It opens doors through networks and connections, but it can hinder a founder if relatives disagree on risk and reward. Institutional money avoids that baggage while imposing pressure to grow fast and exit within set timeframes. He suggests the best outcome comes from balancing the two.

Battle-ready successors

Marco Poon, a third-generation member of a major Hong Kong business-owning family, describes two routes to preparing heirs. Some families require a period in a third-party organisation, so successors learn what a 9-to-5 job, pressure and chasing a sales order feel like. Others fund an entrepreneurial project, which can extend the core business and train the family's people. His own family let him pursue entrepreneurship, and he says it helped him understand the operational challenges they face.

It is about ensuring the survival of the families. It's about cultivating the next generation. It's about developing the family into the next platform.

— Marco Poon, Wealth Office

Nicolas de Santis, co-founder of Opodo, gives a blunter version of the same advice. Asked what a 25-year-old from a wealthy family should do, he says he would want to get his hands dirty, and regards a willingness to work hard as already positive, given how many wealthy heirs do not have it. He urges young people to draw on the values that built their family's success and to focus on value creation over capital accumulation.

So to me the answer is get your hands dirty, go and study the areas that you're interested in and make a dent in the world.

— Nicolas de Santis, Wealth Office

For de Santis, reinvention also requires a longer view. His discipline of visioneering is meant to help a family reinterpret its mission and purpose for the future, since thinking only about the past and present limits what it can become. He offers two lenses for new ventures, solving the world's great challenges or pursuing disruptive innovation, and observes that family strategy meetings rarely look far enough ahead.

The title and the decision

Marshall Jen identifies a tension that preparation alone does not resolve. Michael Macfarlane cites research that more than two-thirds of Asian family offices are led by next-generation executives averaging 44. Jen notes that patriarchs in their eighties often still make the decisions. Approval takes time, and heirs may fear that a mistake will harm their reputation and their inheritance.

The next generations are very innovative and they're very open to ideas. … the problem is when are they actually empowered to make certain decisions?

— Marshall Jen, Wealth Office

Jen's practical suggestion is modest. A small allocation, such as 5% of the portfolio, that proves its return can shift family thinking. He also distinguishes between a family office that invests in assets and one that invests in its next generation. Many heirs he works with wear two hats, looking after the family office while running their own ventures, for example in AI. Families may dislike losing money, he says, but the door is open, and backing those ventures is, in his view, investing in the future.

Freedom, and what heirs do with it

William Louey, fourth-generation head of the Kowloon Motor Bus family, took a different path from the one expected of him. Accepted by St Martin's before he entered the family business as the only son, he decided he was not good at business, employed a chief executive and became a figurehead. He gives his own children freedom to choose, and encouraged them to do something different before they found their passion.

Howard Bilton had no ambition to bring his children into the Sovereign Group, wary of promotion by relationship. His son Tom instead pitched to run the family's Portuguese vineyard. Bilton sees farming as a natural family business and a good way to pass on wealth by making the recipient work for it.

Shield Xiao Dun shows what reinvention can look like for a founder. He started 17 EdTech in 2011, grew it to 20,000 staff, listed it on Nasdaq in 2020 and then absorbed the 2021 double reduction policy, which forced a painful pivot. He says he understands many of the government's reasons for that policy but disagrees with how abruptly it was executed. He now runs a Delaware-incorporated company in Palo Alto building AI tutors. Throughout, he describes purpose as fixed and the company as the vehicle for it.

Even in property, the next generation is making its own choices. Irina Gamagina, who advises internationally mobile families on ultra-prime homes, describes a young tech couple who chose a penthouse at Park Modern over an old house in Belgravia. Younger buyers, she says, prefer practical new homes with facilities, and history matters less than before.

The guests describe inherited capital as a platform for building something new, provided the heir gains the skills, the experience and eventually the authority to use it. The rules differ from family to family. The expectation of real work is shared.