Technology

Hong Kong’s Family Office Ambitions Attract Bloomberg

Editorial Staff 10 October 2024

Hong Kong’s Family Office Ambitions Attract Bloomberg

Seeking to push itself forward as a centre for family offices, competing with places such as the UAE and Singapore, Hong Kong authorities have partnered with the US media and information services group.

Hong Kong is pushing ahead with its plan to attract family offices, inking a partnership with US-headquartered media and business information group Bloomberg on a joint initiative.

Bloomberg and the Financial Services and the Treasury Bureau of Hong Kong’s government have announced the Hong Kong Family Office Nexus. This is a “a joint initiative to further develop the city’s family office sector by providing prospective and existing family offices with access to new resources to support their growth,” according to the wording of a joint press release yesterday.

The US firm will work with the FSTB, Invest Hong Kong (InvestHK) and the Hong Kong Academy for Wealth Legacy (HKAWL) to deliver a series of projects and resources to Hong Kong’s family office sector. 

Hong Kong competes as a family office sector with hubs such as Singapore and Dubai; already a number of such organisations have set up in the Asian city. Bloomberg appears to view this drive as an opportunity for building new lines of business.

The projects undertaken as part of this initiative will include community building, knowledge sharing, technology support, and philanthropic collaboration.

“Family offices play an important and growing role in global financial markets. We are proud to partner with the Hong Kong government to launch Hong Kong Family Office Nexus, building on their longstanding work supporting the family office community in this city,” Bing Li, head of APAC at Bloomberg, said. “This is a unique point in time for family offices as they gain access to new technologies and more data, and we are excited to help them as they grow.” 

The organisations said they will build a digital knowledge hub for Hong Kong’s current and aspiring family offices and service providers. In March 2025, Bloomberg will be holding a “signature event” dedicated to the family office community to coincide with the Wealth for Good in Hong Kong Summit.

Other developments include creating a Hong Kong “family office playbook” to assist family offices to gain a better understanding of current market trends, regulatory considerations, technology options and day-to-day operations. It will provide access to Bloomberg’s suite of family office solutions, including Bloomberg Terminal trials, a range of financial and alternative data, and opportunities to learn from Bloomberg’s experts.

The joint initiative was forged following a meeting in New York between Christopher Hui, secretary for FSTB, and Michael Bloomberg, founder of Bloomberg LP and Bloomberg Philanthropies. 

In June 2023, Hong Kong's government unveiled its “Network of Family Office Service Providers.” The rollout of the network is one of eight initiatives in the government's Policy Statement on Developing Family Office Businesses in Hong Kong. In late 2021, Hong Kong introduced a bill providing tax concessions for investments managed by eligible single-family offices, with retrospective effect from 1 April 2022. Called the Inland Revenue (Amendment) (Tax concessions for family-owned investment holding vehicles) Bill 2022, it exempted family-owned investment holding vehicles and their portfolios of special purpose entities from tax on transactions carried out by a Hong Kong-based family office.

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