发布时间：2019-01-14
How the 0.001% invest
十万分之一的人群怎样投资
Think of the upper echelons of the money-management business, and the image that springs to mind is of fusty private banks in Geneva or London’s Mayfair, with marble lobbies and fake country-house meeting-rooms designed to make their super-rich clients feel at home. But that picture is out of date. A more accurate one would feature hundreds of glassy private offices in California and Singapore that invest in Canadian bonds, European property and Chinese startups—and whose gilded patrons are sleepwalking into a political storm.
想象一下财富管理业务的最高层：我们幻想他们应该端坐在日内瓦或伦敦梅菲尔的私人银行里，置身于大理石厅堂和乡村风格的会议室之中，旨在让其所服务的超级富豪们宾至如归。但这样的印象已经过时了，当下的场景是：位于加利福尼亚和新加坡的数百家玻璃幕墙的私人办公室里，投资向加拿大债券、欧洲房地产和中国的创业公司——背后镀金的老板们则在一场场政治风暴中穿梭。
Global finance is being transformed as billionaires get richer and cut out the middlemen by creating their own “family offices”, personal investment firms that roam global markets looking for opportunities. Largely unnoticed, family offices have become a force in investing, with up to $4trn of assets—more than hedge funds and equivalent to 6% of the value of the world’s stockmarkets. As they grow even bigger in an era of populism, family offices are destined to face uncomfortable questions about how they concentrate power and feed inequality.
全球金融正在转变，因为亿万富翁们变得更加富裕，并通过创建自己的“家族办公室”来切断中间商，这些个人投资公司漫游在全球市场内寻求机会。家族办公室虽还未受到广泛关注，却已成为投资的中坚力量，投资总额高达4万亿美元，超过对冲基金，等同于全球股票市场价值的6％。但是，伴随当下民族主义浪潮日渐壮大的家族办公室，却注定无法回避如何集中权力、处理财富不均这样的尴尬难题。
The concept is hardly new; John D. Rockefeller set up his family office in 1882. But the number has exploded this century. Somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 are based in America and Europe and in Asian hubs such as Singapore and Hong Kong. Though their main task is to manage financial assets, the biggest offices, some with hundreds of staff, undertake all sorts of other chores, from tax and legal work to acting as high-powered butlers who book jets and pamper pets.
“家族办公室”的概念并不新鲜；约翰·D·洛克菲勒早在1882年已成立他的家族办公室。但这个数字在本世纪爆发了：介于5,000到10,000个之间的家族办公室，广泛分布于美国、欧洲以及亚洲的中心（如新加坡和香港）。虽然其主要任务是管理金融资产，但在拥有数百名员工的最大型家族办公室里事务可谓极其繁多：从税务到法务，甚至是预订私人飞机和照顾萌宠的高级管家。
The costs of bringing such expertise in-mansion means that they generally make sense only for those worth over $100m, the top 0.001% of the global pile. Asian tycoons such as Jack Ma of Alibaba have created their own fiefs. The largest Western family offices, such as the one set up by George Soros, an investor and philanthropist, oversee tens of billions and are as muscular as Wall Street firms, competing with banks and private-equity groups to buy whole companies.
组建这种专家团队的成本，通常只对那些价值超过1亿美元的客户才有意义，这里讲的是全球最高净值的0.001％人群。像阿里巴巴的马云这样的亚洲大亨早已创建了自己的封地。最大的西方家族办公室，例如投资者和慈善家乔治·索罗斯（George Soros）所设立的家族办公室管理着数百亿美元，已经与彪悍的华尔街公司无异，可与银行和私募股权集团分庭抗礼，去收购大公司。
Every investment boom reflects the society that spawned it. The humble mutual fund came of age in the 1970s after two decades of middle-class prosperity in America. The rise of family offices reflects soaring inequality. Since 1980 the share of the world’s wealth owned by the top 0.01% has risen from 3% to 8%. As the founders of family firms receive dividends or the proceeds of initial public offerings, they usually redeploy the cash. But since the financial crisis there has been a loss of faith in external money managers. Rich clients have taken a closer look at private banks’ high fees and murky incentives, and balked.
每一次投资热潮都反映了催生它的社会现状。在美国经历了20年的中产阶级繁荣之后，1970年代诞生了低调的共同基金。家族办公室的崛起反映了财富不均现象的飙升。自1980年以来，由0.01％的最高净值人群所拥有的世界财富份额已从3％上升到8％。由于家族企业的创始人获得股息或首次公开募股的收益，他们通常会重新部署现金。但经过金融危机，他们对外部的理财经理的信心已丧失殆尽。在高额的私人银行费用和不显著的激励措施之下，这些富人们踌躇不前。
These trends are unlikely to fade, as our Briefing explains. The number of billionaires is still growing—199 newbies made the grade last year. In the emerging world older entrepreneurs who created firms in the boom years after 1990 are preparing to cash out, while in America and China younger tech entrepreneurs may soon float their companies, releasing a new wave of cash to reinvest. Family offices’ weight in the financial system, therefore, looks likely to rise further. As it does, the objections to them will rise exponentially. The most obvious of these is the least convincing—that family offices have created inequality. They are a consequence, not its cause. Nonetheless, there are concerns—and one in particular that is worth worrying about.
正如我们的简报所解释，这些趋势不太可能消退。亿万富翁的数量仍在增长——去年一年世界新增了199位亿万富翁。在新兴世界，1990年以后繁荣时期创建公司的老企业家们正在准备兑现，而在美国和中国，年轻的科技界企业家的公司市值可能会很快浮升，释放出新的现金再投资。因此，家族办公室在金融系统中的重要性可能会进一步地提高。事实上，对家族办公室的反对声也必将甚嚣尘上。最大的反对声其实并不具说服力：他们说家族办公室造成了贫富不均。但这只是结果，而非成因。尽管如此，家族办公室还是存在着一些隐忧问题，最突出的如下：
The first is that family offices could endanger the stability of the financial system. Combining very rich people, opacity and markets can be explosive. ltcm, a $100bn hedge fund backed by the super-rich, blew up in 1998, almost bringing down Wall Street. Scores of wealthy people fell for a Ponzi scheme run by Bernie Madoff that collapsed in 2008. Still, as things stand family offices do not look like the next disaster waiting to happen. They have debt equivalent to 17% of their assets, making them among the least leveraged participants in global markets. On balance, they may even be a stabilising influence. Their funds are usually deployed for decades, making them far less vulnerable to panics than banks and many hedge funds.
首先，家族办公室有可能危及金融体系的稳定性。极端富裕人群资产的体量与不透明程度几乎是爆炸性的。Itcm，这家由超级富豪支持的1000亿美元对冲基金，于1998年爆发，几乎压垮了华尔街。 2008年，伯尼·马多夫（Bernie Madoff）经营的庞氏骗局让无数富豪陷入绝境。这些事件倒还没有使家族办公室看起来如同下一场大灾难。家族办公室的债务占其资产的17％，使其成为全球市场中杠杆率最低的参与者。总的来说，家族办公室甚至可能是一股稳定的影响力。他们的资金部署周期长则数十年，比起银行和许多对冲基金更不容易受到恐慌。
The second worry is that family offices could magnify the power of the wealthy over the economy. This is possible: were Bill Gates to invest exclusively in Turkey, he would own 65% of its stockmarket. But the aim is usually to diversify risk, not concentrate power, by taking capital from the original family business and putting it into a widely spread portfolio. The family-office industry is less concentrated than mainstream asset management, which a few firms such as BlackRock dominate. Compared with most fund managers, family offices have welcome habits, including a longer-term horizon and an appetite for startups.
第二个担忧是家族办公室可以放大富人对经济的影响力。这是可能的：如果比尔-盖茨只在土耳其投资，那他将拥有65％的股票市场。但富人们的初衷是：通过原始家族企业获取资金，将其投入多样化的投资组合来分散风险，而不是集中权力。家族办公室投资的行业，其集中程度低于主流资产管理机构，如贝莱德（Black Rock）这样的业内大佬。与大多数基金经理相比，家族办公室的包容性更广，更具长期战略眼光，也更愿意投资创业公司。
It is the third danger that has most bite: that family offices might have privileged access to information, deals and tax schemes, allowing them to outperform ordinary investors. So far there is little evidence for this. The average family office returned 16% in 2017 and 7% in 2016, according to Campden Wealth, a research firm, slightly lagging behind world stockmarkets. Nonetheless, tycoons are well connected. Family offices are becoming more complex—a third have at least two branches—making tax wheezes easier. Hungry brokers and banks are rolling out the red carpet and pitching deals with unlisted firms that are not available to ordinary investors. If all this did lead to an entrenched, unfair advantage, the effect, when compounded over decades, would make wealth inequality disastrously worse.
第三个也是最致命的危险：家族办公室可能有特权获取内幕信息，如交易和税收计划，使他们能够胜过普通投资者。到目前为止，没有太多例证可以证实这一说法。根据研究公司Campden Wealth的数据，2017年平均家族办公室的回报率为16％，2016年为7％，略低于世界股票市场。尽管如此，大亨巨富们之间关系密切。家族办公室也变得越来越复杂——为了使处理税务更容易，三分之一的家族办公室至少设两个分支机构。如饥似渴的经纪人和银行向那些普通投资者无法获知的非上市公司抛出橄榄枝，完成内幕交易。倘若确实因此导致了根深蒂固的不公平优势，那么这种影响在数十年的恶化中，会灾难性地加剧财富不平等。
The rich discover do-it-yourself
The answer is vigilance and light. Most regulators, treasuries and tax authorities are beginners when it comes to dealing with family offices, but they need to ensure that rules on insider trading, the equal servicing of clients by dealers and parity of tax treatment are observed. And they should prod family offices with assets of over, say, $10bn to publish accounts detailing their workings. In a world that is suspicious of privilege, big family offices have an interest in boosting transparency. In return, they should be free to operate unmolested. They may even have something to teach hordes of flailing asset managers who serve ordinary investors, many of whom may look at their monthly fees and wish that they, too, could ditch the middlemen.
富人们发现：必须自己动手
对富人而言，答案是警惕和松弛并存。在涉及家族办公室时，大多数监管机构，如财政部门和税务机关亦皆是初学者，但他们需要确保禁止内幕交易的原则，经销商对客户的平等服务以及税收待遇均一。监管机构应该推动超过100亿美元规模的家族办公室公开其账户的运作情况。在一个对特权充满质疑声的世界里，大型家族办公室提高透明度会对自身很有好处。作为回报，他们应该享有自由地不受干扰地操作的权利。他们甚至可以教会那些为普通投资者服务的理财经理们，看看每个月付出不菲的手续费，或许也可以准备像家族办公室一样抛掉中间人。
该文章转载自雷梭勒家族办公室，如有侵权，敬请告知删除。
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