Family office for US$12 billion Tetra Pak Fortune exits Hong Kong

[HONG KONG] One of London’s biggest family offices is pulling out of Hong Kong, joining a wave of longstanding investment firms for the ultra-wealthy altering their global footprints amid rising operating costs.

Alta Advisers, which manages money for the UK-based branch of the Rausing family behind Tetra Pak food cartons, ceased investment operations in the territory last year and is now in the process of removing itself from Hong Kong’s business registry, according to regulatory filings. The Fitzrovia-based family office still has an Asia entity in Singapore that it set up more than a decade ago, the filings show.

Representatives for the Rausing family and Alta Advisers, which also shuttered two dormant Singapore firms in 2023, did not respond to requests for comment. The dynasty derives their wealth from Hans Rausing, who sold a stake in food-packaging giant Tetra Pak more than three decades ago. He died in 2019 with a net worth of almost US$12 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Set up in 1996, Alta Advisers is reshaping its corporate structure after seeing its global workforce increase by more than 40 per cent in the past decade to about 50 employees, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. At least 20 individuals tracked by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index of the world’s 500 biggest fortunes had UK family office operations at the start of the year, helping oversee more than US$450 billion.

Similar to the Rausings, the heirs of billionaire investor James Goldsmith took steps recently to close the Hong Kong and Switzerland branches of their decades-old family office, consolidating operations instead in the low-tax Cayman Islands. The family investment firm established 13 years ago for James Dyson, Britain’s richest entrepreneur, also closed some of its UK branches last year and strengthened its financial footprint in Singapore, which hosts the global headquarters of the billionaire’s namesake vacuum and hairdryer-maker.

Operating costs

Family office operating costs have been increasing in recent years, and most often run about 0.6 to 1 per cent of assets under management, according to a survey of 585 professionals in the sector published last year by KPMG and Agreus Group. That’s double the most frequently cited expense in a 2023 survey from the same firms.

“Sophisticated principals increasingly want a structure where the family and the balance sheet can sit together,” said John Prince, founder of family office platform Respada. They don’t want “a patchwork spread across jurisdictions.”

The Rausings founded the company that would become Tetra Laval in 1951. Descendants of Gad Rausing, Hans’s elder brother, still control the closely held company and have their own private investment firms for their wealth. They include Longbow Finance, a Switzerland-based family office with more than three-dozen employees that has allocated collateralised loans and hedge funds.

Hans Rausing, who was 93 when he died, had three children as part of the Tetra Pak dynasty’s third-generation: Lisbet, 65, a scientific historian; Sigrid, 64, a publisher and philanthropist; and a 62-year-old namesake son, who was knighted last year for his services to the UK arts. Alta Advisers was established the year after the elder Hans sold his 50 per cent stake in Tetra Laval for about US$7 billion, fuelling the family office’s efforts to shift into areas such as US equity markets, where it had a roughly US$295 million portfolio as of late 2025, filings show.

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Alta Advisers set up its Singapore unit in 2010 and its Hong Kong branch four years ago as the city ramped up efforts to court family offices as some foreign investors shied away following Beijing tightening its grip. Raymond Ting, a director of Alta’s Hong Kong entity, is head of its Singapore firm, Maywood Asset Management, which describes itself as a money manager for a limited number of qualified investors, filings show. BLOOMBERG