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UBS’s 2025 global family office report, the latest edition of the widely read and referenced log based on a survey of its wealthiest private clients, was published this morning and revealed how offices tried to brace their portfolios ahead of President Trump’s tariff announcements.
Family offices are created to grow and preserve extreme wealth so that it can transcend generations. Similar to institutional investors, offices often build complex, diversified portfolios for all kinds of market environments and rarely make sweeping changes to their strategic asset allocations. Nonetheless, they have optionality and can make changes when opportunities or needs arise.
Early this year, family offices were concerned about broad U.S. tariffs, a trade war, and self-inflicted recession, and were eager to make some adjustments to their portfolios.
“I think people were broadly aware that something was coming in early April, but they weren't quite sure of the details,” Charles Otton, the bank’s head of global family and institutional wealth in the Americas, told Modus. “We found ourselves trying to calm them down quite a lot. That's part of our role.”
While their asset allocation split between traditional (56%) and alternative investments (44%) remained effectively the same compared to last year, family offices made changes underneath the surface, according to the a UBS survey of 317 family-office clients conducted from January 22 to April 4, two days after Trump announced his “Liberation Day” tariffs. (The average net worth of the families that participated was $2.7 billion, and their offices managed an average of $1.1 billion.)
Offices wanted stability and to de-risk, so they sought more exposure to long-term growth trends, yields and diversification, and they did that in a few ways.
After years of expanding private equity allocations and a peak average of 22% of portfolios in 2023, that trend has reversed. The average allocation fell to 21% in 2024, and offices said they plan to shrink it to 18% this year. Otton was surprised by what offices were doing with the capital previously earmarked for private equity: reinvesting it in passive stock indexes of developed markets.
That “is legitimately a very big takeout from this,” he said. “People were moving out of private equity and reallocating to other places, including half of that going into U.S. public equities. Families are getting more liquid.”
A global average of 36% of family office equity portfolios are managed passively, but this varies by region. The average family office in the Asia-Pacific is managing 22% of its equity portfolio passively. In the U.S., 53% are doing the same.
Regardless of whether an investor thinks the U.S. tariffs are a policy disaster or genius, high-stakes negotiating by Trump that will make the economy stronger, global trade and businesses have already been disrupted, and the immediate future is opaque. Family offices realize they can’t do much about those things.
“They're sort of letting stuff come at them and just recognizing that you can't control the ocean, and therefore let's just ride the ocean. Early April, [markets] are down. By late April, we're back up again,” Otton said.
As offices move from private to public equities, they are also allocating more to private debt, for its higher yields and diversification. The average allocation doubled from 2% in 2023 to 4% in 2024 and is still expanding. This year, families planning to make changes are bumping it up to 5%.
“If you're going to be in a private world, credit is probably a slightly easier place to be because you get your money back at some stage, it doesn't move with significant marks and you're a senior part of the capital structure,” Otton said.
Across asset classes, and no matter the region they come from, family offices are investing most of their wealth in North America and Western Europe. A global average of 79% of all assets is invested there. A majority of their portfolios (53%) were invested in North America in 2025, up marginally (more than 3%) compared to last year. U.S. family offices have the greatest home bias and are “cutting their exposure to international markets to the point where it has become marginal,” according to the UBS report. They are allocating 86% of their portfolios to North America, a percentage that has grown from 74% in 2020.
“The U.S. capital market is so deep and so large. It's so difficult to read that in a period of significant volatility. Whereas if you are more focused on your own home market, the Middle East or Asia Pacific or wherever it is, perhaps you have some more confidence understanding the smaller number of opportunities where you can succeed, or can outperform, and there's less risk of being exposed as fundamentally wrong in a market that you maybe have a little bit more insights into,” Otton said.
Participation in UBS’s 2025 survey was one of the best yet. Otton likened it to when a storm knocks out the power in a whole neighborhood and everyone walks out of their house to see who has electricity, and hear what their plans are.
“I think we're seeing a little bit of that, like-minded people wanting, finding ways to share some of the experiences,” Otton said. “There's so little data on family offices. The nice thing about putting out a family-office report like this, it becomes a bit of a go-to place for people to calibrate themselves. I think we are seeing increasing engagement and willingness to answer this stuff because of the uncertainty that's been created over the last few months.”
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- Why I Can’t Quit the New York Post.
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Jobs
- Fairstead, the real estate firm that owns more than 25,000 apartments across 28 states, is hiring a senior bookkeeper to join a private family office in New York. Salary is $75,000 to $100,000.
- Iconiq Capital is hiring a family office advisory analyst in New York. This person is a “critical member of the relationship management team” who tends to the firm’s wealthy clientele. This role sits within Iconiq Investment Management. Salary is up to $105,000 and there are other benefits, including a smart-casual dress code.
Other Stuff
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