A visit by a senior official from the principality intends to use the Greater Bay Area as a launching pad for closer business ties. 

The first LinkedIn post was innocent enough. Monaco’s Secretary of Attractiveness, Development and Digital Transformation Frederic Genta indicated about a week ago that he would be visiting Hong Kong and Macau.

The intent was to build «more business relationships and economic opportunities» between the principality, Hong Kong and Macau.

Flurry of Meetings

The first results of that effort are starting to trickle in, something finews.asia reported on Thursday. 

At first glance, the visit might sound odd to the ears of certain Hong Kongers given the city and the government’s attempt to go out of the way to attract family offices.

Further Leverage

But Genta managed to elegantly deflect that point by maintaining the principality was not in direct competition, and that the wealthy individuals in the Greater Bay Area should consider Monaco as a potential second base – and one that gave them a foothold in Europe.

Nikkei Asia had a more nuanced (paywall) take on the goings on, saying the visit was also part of an effort by the principality’s monarch, Prince Albert II, to leverage a relationship with casino giant Galaxy Entertainment and billionaire vice chairman Francis Liu Yiu-tung after the latter bought a 5 percent stake in Monaco’s casino almost ten years ago.

No Geopolitical Issue

The publication also maintained that the agenda in both Macau and Hong Kong had been organized by Galaxy itself and that the overall context was additionally helped by the fact that Monaco didn’t have the geopolitically fraught relationship with China that some of its neighboring countries, and EU members, did.

Whatever the case, it seems that we are at or near peak family office excitement in Asia and the Middle East, something that finews.asia has hinted at in previous comments.

New and Legacy

New, upstart, or refreshed hubs in Dubai, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Monaco are now competing with the more established – and rather less vocal - legacy centers located in New York, London, and Zurich.

But there may simply not be enough wealthy individuals to go around at this point – as you can easily shoehorn all the world’s billionaires and centi-millionaires, minus direct relatives, into a medium-sized football stadium.

Some Hiccups

Not everyone is going to end up with the market share they originally envisioned when setting up their respective frameworks, and schemes. 

There are also apt to be some hiccups along the way, such as those that Singapore experienced last year with a highly visible mainland money laundering scandal.

Not Discernible

At the same time, hubs are not businesses, and a massively oversaturated market won’t lead to direct consolidation – at least not any that is very visible. 

It may very well be that the only way we will know who is still successful in the family office space in 5 to 10 years will be the silence, or lack of it, from this new wave of entrants. If experience is anything to go by, the quietest are likely to end up being the most successful.