Global family office foundation chooses Hong Kong as regional base for charity, educational work
- Hong Kong is ‘a prominent and vibrant city for building family legacies,’ says chairman of the Asian Family Legacy Foundation
- The foundation will carry out activities in Hong Kong that allow its global members to work together, network, and raise funds to donate to charity projects
The Asian Family Legacy Foundation, which was founded in January and held its inauguration ceremony in the five-star St Regis Hong Kong hotel on Wednesday, considers the city an ideal location for family offices to get together to carry out their missions in charity work and cultural exchanges.
Zhu, whose family is from mainland China, has spent a lot of time making investments in New York and some years ago set up a similar foundation in the US with a handful of family offices as members.
He believes the same concept will work in Asia, given the growing number of family offices in the region, and therefore set up the foundation as a non-profit organisation.
I am very confident that we can achieve the target set by the Chief Executive for family offices
The foundation will carry out activities in Hong Kong that allow its global members to work together, network, and raise funds to donate to charity projects in education, heritage protection and other community services across Asia.
Some of the 120 members have already run family offices in Hong Kong for many years, while others work out of the mainland, Asia and Latin America.
“Among our 120 members, a lot of them are overseas family offices which really want to come to Hong Kong to learn about the policies and regulations here,” Zhu said.
In the same month, Hong Kong’s Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po announced that the Hong Kong Academy for Wealth Legacy would introduce a database called Impact Link, or iLink, to connect donors with charity projects in the latest push to attract wealthy families to set up offices in the city for undertaking investments, philanthropy and succession planning.
These measures came after Chief Executive John Kee Ka-chiu, in October 2022, set the target of having 200 large family offices up and running in the city by 2025.
Zhu said these policies have made Hong Kong an attractive hub for family offices, so the foundation decided to set up in the city to connect families from the East and West.
InvestHK, a government agency that promotes the city as an international financial centre, launched a family office team three years ago to attract wealthy families to come here to invest their fortunes and manage their succession planning.
It has received more than 650 inquiries about setting up family offices in Hong Kong, Jason Fong, global head of family office at InvestHK, said in Wednesday’s media briefing.
The inquiries were from wealthy families in mainland China, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and the Americas, he said.
The team has so far helped 64 family offices set up in Hong Kong, while another 130 have made the decision to do so.
“I am very confident that we can achieve the target set by the Chief Executive for family offices,” Fong said.
