Investing
Allocation, direct deals, private markets and passion assets.
Private fortunes lead a $135m round in superhot-rock geothermal
Mazama Energy's Series B, announced on 17 September 2026, was led by two privately held investment firms, with oil majors and a family foundation alongside them.
Diamonds nobody owned: the SEC sues Lugano's founder, and names three family trusts
On 31 August 2026 the SEC filed fraud charges against Mordechai Ferder, founder of Lugano Diamonds, over investment contracts in stones the firm never bought. Three of his family trusts are named as relief defendants.
Who is financing economic capacity?
Sovereign funds are no longer only chasing returns; a handful now invest to build industries. Sertan Ayçiçek on why that distinction matters.
Ortega's family office bought 86 London flats for £150m. Nobody noticed for six months.
Pontegadea's first UK rented residential purchase surfaced in Companies House filings in August, half a year after it completed. The disclosure lag matters as much as the deal.
Why today's art market rewards conviction, not headlines
Headlines keep celebrating record prices, but beneath them the market has become sharply selective. Thomas Reinshagen, an independent art adviser in Zurich, on the discipline that now separates lasting collections from expensive ones.
Family offices bought AI infrastructure and sold China last quarter, 13F filings show
Dakota's August monitor reads second-quarter filings from a small group of very large single family offices. The pattern is consistent. What a 13F covers is not.
New family offices want direct deals, not hedge funds, Fintrx Q2 data shows
Fintrx added 96 family offices to its platform in the second quarter of 2026. Only 10.4 per cent listed an interest in hedge funds, against 38.2 per cent of the database as a whole.
Family offices kept buying clean energy through a turbulent July
Family offices made 57 direct investments in July 2026, Fintrx data shows, with more than 15 per cent going to clean energy and sustainability firms.
Family offices are buying robotics while the rest of the market argues about an AI bubble
Bloomberg reports that the investment vehicles of Bernard Arnault, Jeff Bezos and Azim Premji have all put money into robotics companies in recent weeks. The capital is going in direct, at early stage, and into a single theme.
Goldman Sachs builds a private markets platform for its wealthy clients
Goldman Sachs has pulled its private-market activities into one unit aimed at family offices who want direct stakes in late-stage private companies, plus a way to trade them.
Sotheby's posts a record first half as trophy lots and luxury lead
Sotheby's reported $4.4bn in sales for the first half of 2026, its strongest six months, with auction sales of $3.4bn, record private sales of $826m and estate collections selling through at 96 per cent.
Hedge Funds Record One of Their Strongest First Halves in Decades
PivotalPath data shows the hedge fund composite returned 7.3 per cent in the first half of 2026, its best start since 2013. The gains land as family offices weigh a return to a strategy many had trimmed.
From allocation to direct deals: how family offices invest
From asset allocation to direct deals: how family offices invest, the pull towards co-investment, and the governance that keeps investment decisions disciplined.
Beckham's brand company made $92 million last year. He owns 45 per cent of it.
DRJB Holdings, David Beckham's licensing vehicle, is now generating close to $100 million in annual revenue. The business was partly sold in 2022 and has grown fast since.
84 per cent of family offices say geopolitics is their top concern. They are not changing much.
BlackRock's 2025 survey of 175 single family offices found near-universal concern about geopolitical risk but surprisingly stable portfolio allocations.
J. Safra Sarasin takes 70 per cent of Saxo Bank for €1.1 billion
Months after settling its inheritance dispute, the Safra banking dynasty made its biggest acquisition in years, buying a majority stake in Denmark's Saxo Bank.
The week in family offices
One email a week: what moved across family offices and private wealth, and what it means.