Wealth accumulates. Attention does not

[SINGAPORE] A senior tech executive living in Singapore recently asked us to review retirement and long-term savings accounts he had accumulated earlier in his career. He believed most of the money was invested in equity strategies.

It was not. Some of the accounts had been opened many years earlier. They were professionally managed, the institutions were reputable and nothing was obviously wrong. But the way the money was invested no longer reflected what he thought he owned.

It is a pattern I increasingly encounter as families accumulate wealth in accounts, institutions and countries.