By Joss Bucknall
Geopolitics at the forefront of Family Office planning
For a number of years, principals asked us who can grow our capital? Today, from Mayfair to Greenwich to Geneva, the question is sharper. Who can help us keep it, through whatever comes next?
Tariffs announced overnight, conflicts redrawing supply chains, rate regimes reversing within a cycle, tax rules moving faster than structures were built to absorb. Families who once measured success in returns now measure it in durability: across markets, jurisdictions and generations.
We see this shift first in the search brief. The roles are changing, the profiles are changing, and the cost of a wrong senior appointment has never been higher.
What the research says
The institutional studies point one way: family offices are not retreating from risk; they are redesigning how they hold it.
Geopolitics is now the headline. The UBS Global Family Office Report 2025, surveying more than 300 single family offices, found a major trade war was the leading near-term concern and major geopolitical conflict the top five-year risk. Goldman Sachs’ 2025 Family Office Investment Insights placed geopolitical and macro uncertainty at the centre of family office concerns.
The sector is growing fast. Deloitte Private estimates single family offices worldwide at roughly 8,000 in 2024, rising to more than 10,700 by 2030, with assets climbing from about $3.1 trillion to $5.4 trillion. More offices means fiercer competition for a small pool of genuinely senior talent.
Governance is the quiet vulnerability. J.P. Morgan’s Global Family Office Report has repeatedly found that a meaningful share of offices lack formal succession plans and robust cyber protection, while the likes of RBC flag the difficulty of retaining senior staff.
The wealth transfer is under way. Cerulli Associates projects around $124 trillion will pass between generations in the US alone through 2048. Every transfer tests the structures, and the people, a family has put in place.
Resilience is a leadership problem first
Wealth rarely erodes because a family chose the wrong asset class. It erodes because no one in the room was empowered, or willing, to say the difficult thing at the right moment.
The offices that came through 2008, 2020 and 2022 strongest shared three traits: investment leaders who thought in scenarios, not forecasts; operations built to flex under pressure; and governance that made decision rights clear. None of these appears on a CV. That is why the next senior appointment is itself a risk-management decision.
UK, US and Europe: one theme, different pressures
United Kingdom. The replacement of the non-dom regime in April 2025 and changes to inheritance tax reliefs have pushed internationally mobile families to revisit residency and structuring. Demand is rising for leaders who pair investment fluency with cross-border tax and trust judgement.
United States. Here the pressure is scale. Larger offices are institutionalising fast, building direct investment teams, formal investment committees and enterprise-grade risk and cyber functions. Succession, as founder wealth meets the great wealth transfer, is the defining people issue.
Continental Europe. Many families are multi-generational and tied to an operating business, so resilience covers the enterprise as much as the portfolio. The prized leader bridges family, business and office, and is as credible in a family council as in an investment committee.
The five leaders resilient offices are hiring
- The scenario-led CIO, who builds portfolios to absorb inflation, rate and liquidity shocks, and explains the trade-offs plainly.
- The institution-building CEO or Head of Office, who turns a capable team into an enduring organisation. The hardest role to fill, and the most consequential.
- The COO or CFO as resilience architect, owning reporting, controls, banking diversification and cyber.
- The Chief Risk Officer, once rare outside the largest offices, now covering market, operational, reputational and geopolitical exposure.
- The family governance and next-generation lead, preparing heirs and keeping the family aligned.
Technical excellence is the entry ticket. The decisive factor is how a leader behaves when the plan stops working.
Where searches go wrong
Most failed appointments are avoidable. The usual causes are hiring a big-institution CV without testing for a small, principal-facing environment; leaving decision rights unclear, so even a strong hire stalls; underweighting cultural fit with the family and the next generation; searching only among active candidates, when the best sit quietly in other family offices, endowments and sovereign funds; and mis-benchmarking pay, which for top roles is now close to institutional levels.
A good search begins with a candid diagnostic. The brief that emerges is usually sharper than the one first imagined.
Four questions to be asked before hiring
- If our biggest market assumption proved wrong, who would see it first, and tell us?
- Do our governance and decision rights still fit what we now own?
- Is our leadership ready for the next generation, or dependent on one person?
- Would the leader we are about to appoint challenge us when it matters?
Resilient wealth is built by resilient people
No one can predict the next shock. What families can control is the judgement and alignment of the people they trust to navigate it. In a less predictable world, that is the most important investment decision a family office will make.
Speak with us in confidence. Our family office practice advises principals and family councils across the UK, US and Europe on CEO, CIO, COO, CFO, risk and governance appointments.
