经济学人下载:家族办公室:超级富豪的生财之道(3)

The first is that family offices could endanger the stability of the financial system. Combining very rich people, opacity and markets can be explosive. LTCM, a $100bn hedge fund backed by the super-rich, blew up in 1998, almost bringing down Wall Street. Scores of wealthy people fell for a Ponzi scheme run by Bernie Madoff that collapsed in 2008. Still, as things stand family offices do not look like the next disaster waiting to happen. They have debt equivalent to 17% of their assets, making them among the least leveraged participants in global markets. On balance, they may even be a stabilising influence. Their funds are usually deployed for decades, making them far less vulnerable to panics than banks and many hedge funds.
第一，家族办公室可能危及金融系统稳定。超级富豪的结合会让不透明度和市场会井喷。美国长期资本管理公司是由超级富豪出资的1000亿美元的对冲基金，1998年濒临破产，几乎拖垮整个华尔街。2008年，伯尼•马多夫经营的庞氏骗局宣告破产，大量富豪因此财富受损。不过按目前情况来看，家族办公室看起来并不像下一个潜在灾难。其债务相当于其资产的17%，是全球市场杠杆率最低的参与者之一。总而言之，家族办公室产生的影响较稳定。其基金配置通常已有几十年，这使其远没有银行和许多对冲基金那么容易受到恐慌的影响。

The second worry is that family offices could magnify the power of the wealthy over the economy. This is possible: were Bill Gates to invest exclusively in Turkey, he would own 65% of its stockmarket. But the aim is usually to diversify risk, not concentrate power, by taking capital from the original family business and putting it into a widely spread portfolio. The family-office industry is less concentrated than mainstream asset management, which a few firms such as BlackRock dominate. Compared with most fund managers, family offices have welcome habits, including a longer-term horizon and an appetite for startups.
第二个忧虑是，家族办公室可能会放大富豪对经济的影响。这种情况有可能出现：如果比尔·盖茨只在土耳其投资，那么他的持股比可能达到65%。但投资目的通常是分散风险，而非集权，即从家族企业中获取原始资金，并将其投入分布广泛的投资组合。家族办公室不如主流资产管理行业集中度高（贝莱德等少数几家公司主宰着主流资产管理）。与大多数基金经理相比，家族办公室的习惯更受欢迎，包括更长远的眼光和对初创公司的兴趣。

It is the third danger that has most bite: that family offices might have privileged access to information, deals and tax schemes, allowing them to outperform ordinary investors. So far there is little evidence for this. The average family office returned 16% in 2017 and 7% in 2016, according to Campden Wealth, a research firm, slightly lagging behind world stockmarkets. Nonetheless, tycoons are well connected. Family offices are becoming more complex—a third have at least two branches—making tax wheezes easier. Hungry brokers and banks are rolling out the red carpet and pitching deals with unlisted firms that are not available to ordinary investors. If all this did lead to an entrenched, unfair advantage, the effect, when compounded over decades, would make wealth inequality disastrously worse.
第三个危险杀伤力最大：家族理财室可能优先享有信息、交易以及税务计划获取特权，这让其胜过普通投资者。不过到目前为止，还没有证据能够证实这一点。据康顿财富研究公司的数据显示，家族理财室的平均回报率2017年为16%，2016年为7%，略低于全球股市。尽管如此，但富豪们人脉很广。家族办公室正变得愈发复杂——三分之一的家族办公室至少有两个分支——为减轻税收负担。饥肠辘辘的券商和银行正铺上红地毯，等待与普通投资者无法接触的非上市公司进行交易。如果这一切确实导致产生根深蒂固而不公平的优势，那么几十年的影响叠加，会使得财富不平等灾难性恶化。

The answer is vigilance and light. Most regulators, treasuries and tax authorities are beginners when it comes to dealing with family offices, but they need to ensure that rules on insider trading, the equal servicing of clients by dealers and parity of tax treatment are observed. And they should prod family offices with assets of over, say, $10bn to publish accounts detailing their workings. In a world that is suspicious of privilege, big family offices have an interest in boosting transparency. In return, they should be free to operate unmolested. They may even have something to teach hordes of flailing asset managers who serve ordinary investors, many of whom may look at their monthly fees and wish that they, too, could ditch the middlemen.
唯有以警惕和放松来应对。在和家族办公室打交道方面，大多数监管机构、财政部门和税务部门都是新手，但是需要确保家族办公室遵守内幕交易、经销商为客户提供平等服务、同等税收待遇方面的规则。且应敦促资产超过100亿美元的家族办公室公布详细运作情况的账目。作为回报，家族办公室应可以不受干扰自由运作。家族办公室甚至可以给一些为普通投资者服务的摇摇欲坠的资产管理公司传经授道，毕竟很多资产管理公司看着每月产生的费用，也希望可以摆脱中间商。