For high- and ultra-high-net-worth families, the traditional combination of a discretionary trust and an institutional trustee, while robust, often creates tension: the settlor wishes to retain influence over family assets and operating businesses, yet legal ownership must be ceded to an external trustee. A Private Trust Company (PTC) addresses this tension by serving as a dedicated trustee for one family's trust(s), with a board composed of family members and professional advisors.

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18 July 2026

Founded in 1888 in a coastal village near Zhuhai, Lee Kum Kee has grown over five generations into a global sauce and health-products group selling in more than one hundred markets. In a Chinese cultural context where "wealth rarely survives three generations" is almost a folk proverb, the family's longevity is widely cited in global family-business literature not because of its commercial scale, but because of how it transformed two near-fatal ownership disputes into a replicable, revisable and durable institutional architecture.

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1 July 2026

Introducing private equity (PE) into a family business is no longer synonymous with "selling out." With Japan's succession-driven PE boom surpassing JPY 3 trillion in annual deal value through 2025, and Asian family offices now allocating one-quarter to one-third of their portfolios to private equity, partnering with PE has emerged as a strategic middle path between preserving control and accelerating growth. This article examines four dimensions — transaction rationale, structural choice, term-sheet design, and cultural integration — and unpacks practical mechanisms such as earn-outs, tag-along/drag-along rights, board composition, and liquidation preferences. The goal is to help first-generation founders and next-generation successors understand that PE can serve as either an accelerant for succession or a dilutive force on control. The decisive factor lies in pre-deal self-preparation, viewing the business through a buyer's lens, and reinforcing family governance frameworks before negotiations begin.

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14 June 2026

Hong Kong has firmly established itself as Asia's leading family office hub, leveraging its gateway role between Mainland China and the world, sophisticated financial infrastructure, and targeted tax incentives. According to a Deloitte study commissioned by InvestHK, more than 3,380 single family offices (SFOs) were operating in Hong Kong by end-2025 — a 25%+ jump in two years — contributing over HKD 10 billion to the local economy annually. Alongside this SFO boom, Multi-Family Offices (MFOs) are emerging as a cost-efficient, shared-platform alternative for mid-tier wealthy families.

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01 June 2026

Hong Kong government is strengthening its role as a gateway for global private wealth through the New Capital Investment Entrant Scheme, family office policies and tax concessions for family-owned investment holding vehicles, which reflects that Hong Kong is transforming itself from a ‘a place for fund parking’ to ‘a platform for family capital, governance and legacy’. For wealthy families, bringing capital into Hong Kong is only the beginning. The real succession challenge is whether family governance, trust design, tax compliance and next generation preparation, etc, are designed as one integrated legacy system.  The strategic issue for wealthy families is not whether capital should be deployed into Hong Kong. The most important question is whether investment entry, holding company structure, trust design, next-generation preparation, tax residency, and family governance are aligned.

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11 May 2026

Hong Kong permanent residency is far more than an ID card—it is a generational identity contract. Under Article 24 of the Basic Law and Schedule 1 of the Immigration Ordinance, eligibility differs by nationality: Chinese citizens qualify by birth in Hong Kong, seven years of continuous ordinary residence, or descent from a permanent resident parent; non-Chinese nationals must enter with a valid travel document, ordinarily reside in Hong Kong for seven continuous years immediately before application, and declare Hong Kong as their only permanent place of residence. In practice, today's most common "seven-year pathways" are the six talent schemes: Quality Migrant Admission Scheme (QMAS), Top Talent Pass Scheme (TTPS), General Employment Policy (GEP), Admission Scheme for Mainland Talents and Professionals (ASMTP), Immigration Arrangements for Non-local Graduates (IANG), and the Technology Talent Admission Scheme (TechTAS), plus the relaunched New Capital Investment Entrant Scheme (New CIES), enhanced with effect from 1 March 2025.

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8 July 2026

Hong Kong remains one of Asia's most attractive jurisdictions for setting up a business, thanks to its simple tax regime, free flow of capital, and well-established commercial legal framework. This article provides a practical, end-to-end guide to launching a business in Hong Kong, covering five core areas: company incorporation and business registration, corporate bank account opening, office leasing, hiring employees and Mandatory Provident Fund (MPF) compliance, and ongoing tax and annual filing obligations. It also addresses office location strategy (Grade A Central rents near HKD 90 psf vs. lower-cost Kowloon East), lease stamp duty, and employment visa pathways under the General Employment Policy (GEP), enabling founders to land compliantly in the shortest possible timeframe while avoiding common pitfalls.

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22 June 2026

State Council Decree No. 837, the Regulations on Outbound Investment (effective 1 July 2026), is China's first administrative regulation dedicated to outbound investment. For the first time it expressly brings “resident individuals within China” into the definition of outbound investors (Article 2), and treats investment in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan as governed “by reference” to the Regulations (Article 32). For mainland individuals establishing trusts or buying large life/participating insurance policies in Hong Kong, the Decree's significance is not an immediate prohibition or reporting duty, but rather that it provides the legislative basis for forthcoming “specific administrative measures” for resident individuals (Article 33) — shifting personal offshore asset allocation from an unsystematised grey zone to an explicit, state-coordinated regulatory framework. The existing foreign-exchange regime is unchanged: the USD 50,000 annual facilitation quota and the continued closure of individual outbound direct investment under the capital account mean that channelling onshore funds into offshore structures remains tightly controlled, while trusts and policies funded with legitimately-held offshore assets are far less affected. Practitioners should distinguish onshore from offshore funding sources, document source-of-funds and CRS compliance, and closely monitor the thresholds, exemptions and legacy-asset treatment in the detailed rules to come.

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07 June 2026

Life insurance and family trusts are often discussed as separate succession tools, yet their true power emerges when combined. A life policy provides immediate, tax-efficient liquidity and value leverage at the moment of death; a trust provides governance, asset protection and multi-generational distribution control. By placing the policy inside a trust — or by routing the death benefit into an insurance-proceeds trust — Hong Kong and cross-border families can solve the four classic pain points of wealth transfer: liquidity shortfall, probate delay, creditor and divorce exposure, and intergenerational mismanagement.

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20 May 2026