Investment

Capricorn Investment Group, a large US-based multi family office, has joined a newly launched property investment club in a bid to “get back to basics”.

Stephen George, co-founder and chief investment officer of Capricorn Investment Group, said the family office is investing €25 million in the Family Office Real Estate Partnership, which was launched earlier this month.

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Societe Generale has launched a new private banking service aimed at ultra-high net worth entrepreneurs with family offices or holding companies.

The France-based bank launched the new service, called Private Investment Banking, on 12 March and said it will offer wealth management and investment banking services, covering entrepreneurs’ private wealth and their businesses.

This will include merger and acquisitions advisory, capital increases, initial public offerings and direct access to all capital markets.

A former partner of Capricorn Investment Group, the family office established by eBay founder Jeff Skoll, has launched a new club aimed at helping family offices invest together directly in commercial real estate.

Basil Demeroutis, managing partner of the Family Office Real Estate Partnership, said the direct co-investing platform would give family offices more control over their property investments than conventional routes.

L Capital, the investment vehicle of LVMH and Groupe Arnault, has acquired a 10% stake in Chinese fashion company Trendy International Group in a deal reportedly worth $200 million ($152 million).

A spokeswoman for the private equity fund said the deal had gone ahead, although she did not confirm the value.

According to reports, L Capital teamed up with China's state-owned financial conglomerate China Citic Group to acquire a direct 10% stake in Trendy, although L Capital is thought to own the majority of the shares.

Extending the deadline to disclose assets held in Liechtenstein is an “important development” for British ultra-high net worth families, but it will be “dangerous to wait” to come clean about tax arrears.

That’s according to Philip Marcovici, a member of the board of wealth manager Kaiser Partner and a former partner at law firm Baker & McKenzie.

Wealthy people are failing to make their financial advisers fully aware of their goals, leaving them at risk of incomplete or ineffective advice, new research shows.

Although the study, released by asset management and investment operations firm SEI, found that more than two-thirds of high net worth individuals believed it was important their advisers knew their financial, business and personal goals to be successful, just a quarter said their adviser had “depth of knowledge” about these.

The amount of wealth held by high net worth individuals in India has increased faster than that held by rich people globally.

That is according to the India Wealth Report, released by Indian wealth management firm Karvy Private Wealth. It found that while the fortunes of HNW individuals internationally grew by around 9% during the year, money held by Indian rich increased by more than 11%.

This made India one of the fastest-growing HNW populations in the world, accounting for 1.2% of global wealth, said the report.

Africa confirms itself as an increasingly attractive investment option, as JS Group, a Pakistani financial services group, and Stanhill Capital Partners, a Hong Kong-based banking group, have created the first specialist fund to focus on the continent’s coal resources.

The fund, called African Coal Fund, will be managed from Hong Kong and is expected to make its first investment during the first quarter of 2012.

JS Group will hold a majority interest in it, while there won’t be any external investors.

Ashley King-Christopher, Corporate Tax Partner at Speechly Bircham, looks at how family offices are dealing with a more transparent world.

When Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, met Mongolian president Tsakhia Elbegdorj in his yurt recently it might have had all the trappings of a purely ceremonial occasion. After all, western leaders have hardly been beating a track to Ulan Bator, the Mongolian capital; not since George Bush visited in 2005 has a G7 leader been there.

But things are changing in Mongolia. For a start, rather than being on some windswept steppe, that tent was on the fifth floor of the presidential building.

Family offices that are considering adding the renminbi to their portfolio need to see it as a long-term investment, rather than a chance to make a quick buck, according to a banker.

With the ongoing internationalisation of the renminbi, also known as the Chinese yuan, and China’s aim to make it a reserve currency, Geoff Lunt, investment director of Asian fixed income at HSBC, said he thinks a “time will come when everyone will have to have a Chinese bond in their portfolio”.

Imagine that somebody offers you two alternative bets. The first has a 40% chance of winning and would give you a 40% profit on your money if you win. The alternative is a 20/1 shot where you would win 2,000% of your stake if it comes in. Which would you choose? Most people go for the second, but mathematically the first choice has better chances of giving you a good return. This little human quirk is known as the longshot preference, and is what keeps lotteries all over the world in business.