This week, UBS published its 2024 global family office report, with 320 single-family offices participating — the most ever. And the respondents remained distinctly wealthy; the average net worth was $2.6 billion and the group's collective wealth was more than $600 billion.

Quick takes from the report came out fast, from changes to family-office investment portfolios (they are buying more bonds) to what they are most worried about (geopolitical conflicts, climate change and sovereign debt, to name a few).

I wanted to know more, including why so many family offices participated in the survey this year, and why their attitudes about certain asset classes had shifted. So I called Charles Otton, the head of global family and institutional wealth in the Americas at UBS. 

Otton believes the growing interest in the survey is easy to explain. It’s partly because UBS is doing a good job serving family offices, which he acknowledged is self-promoting. “We feel as though some of that is being reflected in higher engagement with us,” Otton said.

But other factors contributed, too. There are more family offices, they are becoming wealthier and more sophisticated, and so a greater number are seeking advice. More want to participate in the survey, and they take it seriously. They view it as a collective effort to improve. “I think people want to share their views and, because all families are different, it is quite interesting for one family to know what another family is doing,” Otton said. UBS family office events have never been as well attended as they are right now, he added.

The report also benefited from the bank’s recently expanded network of family offices after it folded in Credit Suisse, one of its biggest private wealth management rivals, last year. The combination brought total assets at UBS to $5.7 trillion and net profit to $28.7 billion in 2023.

Some of the changes to family-office portfolios weren’t surprising. Last year, they expanded their allocations to public fixed income as interest rates rose and a recession seemed more likely. Family offices remain heavily invested in alternatives (an average of 42 percent of portfolios) and have a significant bias toward U.S. markets.

When it comes to private equity, 61 percent of family offices say the slowdown in realizations and exit activity is their main concern for the next 12 months and 48 percent were specifically worried about a lack of liquidity. Still, over the next five years, 39 percent plan to add to their direct private equity allocations.

However, family offices are not as worried as some other big investors that have constraints (think public pensions). Many families can have more patience with general partners — if they choose to.

“If you're a certain size then you can probably afford to do that and maybe it's a greater value creation exercise,” Otton said. “Those concerns are always there about liquidity in private equity portfolios, but the family office probably on average has the ability to take a longer-term view over it, particularly if they can find liquidity through borrowing against those investments.”

For those reasons, the average allocation to private equity in family-office portfolios (22 percent) could grow larger in the future.

They are making big, long-term investments in things that are getting proportionately fewer headlines, Otton said. When asked about the areas they planned to invest in over the coming three years, artificial intelligence was the most popular (78 percent), but it was followed closely by healthtech (70 percent), and then automation and robotics (67 percent).

• From II: For only the second time since 2020, the massive global law firm Dentons surveyed a couple hundred family-office employees about risks to their employers and published a report. Many offices have prepared for external threats but not enough for internal ones that could upend their investment portfolios and operations.
   
• Also in II: Stanley Druckenmiller’s Duquesne Family Office, which manages the wealth of the billionaire investor, established more new positions at the start of 2024 than it had in any quarter since it began filing disclosure statements in 2018. Among other trades: After making Nvidia one of its biggest holdings last year, Duquesne cut its stake by more than 70 percent in the first quarter.
   
• Sotheby’s executive Brooke Lampley is leaving the auction house for mega gallery Gagosian, Artnet reported Wednesday. Her clients include billionaires Ken Griffin and Stephen Schwarzman.
   
• Do you work for a family eager to make a big Hollywood investment? Kevin Costner wants to pitch you! The actor told GQ that he has already sunk $38 million of his own money into a Western saga called “Horizon” that he had the idea for in 1988 and is co-writing, directing, and starring in. Costner says the third and fourth parts haven't been financed yet and wants someone rich to join him on the ride. “I got my suitcase on the end of the street, you know, and seeing: Where are all you brave, rich billionaires? If I hear the word billionaire one more time, I think I’m going to puke,” Costner said. (The first part got an 11-minute, 40-second ovation at Cannes Film Festival last weekend.)
   
• Adani Group, the Indian conglomerate founded by Gautam Adani, one of the world’s richest men, has been suspected of fraud by selling low-grade coal as high-value fuel, according to reporting and documents reviewed by the Financial Times. The new accusations, which Adani refuted, come 15 months after Hindenburg Research published a note accusing Adani of “pulling the largest con in corporate history.”
   
• Bruce Nordstrom, the former chairman of his family’s namesake retailer, died last weekend at 90. He was the grandson of John W. Nordstrom, the Swedish immigrant who founded the company in 1903 that eventually grew to 182 stores with total sales topping $9 billion. Nordstrom started as an operating oddity and succeeded as one: Bruce’s father, Everett, and Everett’s brothers Elmer and Lloyd, decided that they could be more effective as co-leaders — and family members still hold the highest executive positions of the publicly traded company. You can read Bruce’s full obituary in The New York Times here.

• Lazard Family Office Partners, led by Yale cub, CEO and CIO Casey Whalen who joined last year, is looking for a vice president of public markets. They want someone with at least four years of experience allocating for a consulting firm, endowment, foundation, family office, or relevant investor and are willing to pay up to $145,000.
   
• If investing for family offices is your passion, see above. If making money is your passion, consider this chief-of-staff job at a family office in NYC paying $250,000. Or this executive assistant role at one paying up to $400,000 — that’s not far off from the median salaries of family-office CEOs and CIOs (although their total compensation is typically much higher).