Governance is key to families’ ability to sustain generational wealth, says US adviser

[SINGAPORE] The adage “shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations” exists in almost all cultures, but the largest and most successful American and European families have managed to overcome it.

New York-based investment adviser Zhou Lu said that for the largest US families, the key lies in the entrenchment of governance in their businesses and management of wealth. It is a discipline that Asian families can learn from.

“If you dig into the question of how wealth grows from generation to generation, investments and portfolios are just a piece of it. The governance, legal framework and structure, the operating business that has generated the wealth and the family office that manages the wealth, the dynamics among family members – those intricacies matter in the long run.