HONG KONG — Landmark Family Office (LFO), a private multifamily office, announced the establishment of its global headquarters in Hong Kong as the city’s authorities aim to attract at least 200 family offices by 2025 with a series of incentives.
LFO’s move to pick Hong Kong as its global headquarters comes as the government is trying to transform the city into a global hub for family offices. The announcement was made on Monday.
The Hong Kong government in March introduced a series of measures, including a revamped investment migration scheme, new tax concessions and other incentives, to lure family offices to set up shop in the city. The tax concession scheme, which benefits qualified transactions of family-owned investment holding vehicles managed by single-family offices in Hong Kong, came into effect on May 19.
These family office-oriented measures are part of efforts by the Chinese special administrative region to restore business confidence and investor allure after capital and investors fled to rival financial hubs like Singapore due to strict COVID-19 rules and increased geopolitical uncertainties over the last few years.
The number of single-family offices in Singapore reached 1,100 as of the end of 2022, up 57.1% from 700 a year earlier, the Monetary Authority of Singapore revealed in its annual report published on July 5.
Incorporated in Hong Kong in 2022 to serve founding families and independent clients, LFO is led by Chief Investment Officer Andrew Sharrock, an ex-Asia Pacific CIO at U.S. custodian bank State Street, and CEO Cameron Harvey, who previously held senior management roles at companies across the Asia-Pacific region including UBS and BNP Paribas.
LFO started operations in January this year and has already built offices in Hong Kong and Sydney. The company wants to expand to Singapore and the Middle East in the near future, it said in a statement.
Through the Hong Kong headquarters, LFO is looking to leverage its strategic location to provide a suite of tailored family office solutions centered around investment management across traditional and alternative asset classes.
LFO’s decision to anchor the business in Hong Kong comes from the founding members’ confidence in the city’s “regulatory environment” and “strong government support for the family office sector,” said Sharrock in the statement.
These favorable factors provide “an optimal ecosystem for our family office setup,” said Sharrock. “The family office industry in Hong Kong is developing at a rapid pace, with increasing demand for bespoke sophisticated wealth management solutions for ultra high net worth families and individuals.”
With a team experienced in areas including asset management, private equity, legacy planning and family governance, LFO operates under a private multifamily office model that differs significantly from the typical external asset manager models that are prevalent in the market.
It places a primary focus on investments and asset management to build out a personalized approach for every client, versus the current mainstream approach of relying on the recruitment of relationship managers, and by proxy their clients, from private banks.
Image by: Landmark Family Office
