Family offices — the new private equity firms?

Are family offices the better private equity firms? Or is direct invest­ment by family offices a tempo­rary pheno­me­non that will soon be over due to the alle­ged lack of profes­sio­na­lism of family busi­nesses? A wide variety of opini­ons prevail on this issue and are inten­si­vely discus­sed by the media as well as at confe­ren­ces. In the follo­wing, after a brief intro­duc­tion to the topic, we would like to provide an over­view of our rese­arch findings on the topic of direct invest­ments by family offices.

Family offices are only slowly turning to the field of direct invest­ment, at least in Europe. Why is that? In contrast to the Ameri­can market, family offices are a rela­tively new pheno­me­non in Europe. It is true that there were alre­ady noble fami­lies in the Middle Ages who had achie­ved wealth through trade and had it mana­ged and increased in Family Office-like struc­tures. Howe­ver, these struc­tures disap­peared again into obli­vion for seve­ral centu­ries, as corre­spon­ding asset manage­ment tasks were taken over by private banks.