Celebrity Life
The Baby Brokers: Inside America’s Murky Private-Adoption Industry
The Baby Brokers: Inside America’s Murky Private-Adoption Industry
The Baby Brokers: Inside America’s Murky Private-Adoption Industry
Everything You Wanted to Know About Private Banking But Were Afraid to Ask
“Everyone wants to go to heaven, but no one wants to die” is the common lament of private bankers and wealth managers about the contradictory demands of their clients.
Since the 2008 global financial crisis and the current post-Covid period, volatility, risk, returns, expectations and lofty financial market bubbles continue to defy each new high. Wealth advisers are increasingly forced to redefine their roles and find new ways to explain (or not) how they can help you navigate today’s markets.
Expensive equity valuations since 2009 are a regular reason deterring investors from investing in equities. From its March low the S&P 500 jumped by 60 per cent and the Nasdaq index by 75 per cent. Both indices reached their record highs despite a Covid pandemic that continues to plague the global economy and impact corporate earnings. Global gross domestic product and corporate earnings aren’t expected to recover to pre-pandemic levels until late 2021 or even 2022. This perplexing divergence of economic and corporate fundamentals versus the performance of the equity markets creates doubts on valuations and the sustainability of this rally.
High- and ultra-high-net-worth individuals and family offices must continue to seek returns and yields in a market pressuring diminishing returns as global equity markets become overpriced and squeeze out less value by the month. They also must contend with their understanding of volatility versus risk. Markets are volatile in the way they change unpredictably. But investors must clearly understand their personal and family goals and how their entire strategy needs to protect their downside risk.
[caption id="attachment_212489" align="alignnone" width="1024"]
Investors must clearly understand their personal and family goals and how their entire strategy needs to protect their downside risk. (Image: Michelle Henderson/ Unsplash)[/caption]
And while the pandemic has changed the way all of us communicate and socialise, it has also forced a rethink about how bankers and clients mutually learn, understand and manage investment goals and relationships. The long client lunches and presentations have given way to teleconferencing apps on desktop and mobile devices as the means for building trust. Today’s video technology represents a vast improvement, but no one knows if it may only be a temporary or tolerable substitute for face-to-face meetings.
Private bankers are increasingly in the business of offering advice across a number of wealth-related areas, such as trusts, succession and long-term portfolio planning. Online brokerages and chatrooms do a cheaper job at stock picking, speculation and other execution needs. Steering clients away from a short-term transaction and trading-oriented relationship with private banking – a particularly bad investment habit in Asia – has started to influence the new generation of wealth that’s studied finance and understands the importance of disciplined, long- term portfolio diversification.
Building a strategic concept of investment and the world takes years; it actually requires a reasonable knowledge and grasp of non-financial topics such as history, economics, culture and politics. You have to create and consume intellectual capital at the same time in order to learn from your investment successes and failures.
Wealth advisers dislike committing or discussing investment scenarios beyond basic lessons about the importance of diversification. Telling a client to sell everything leaves the bank’s relationship manager with a client with no reason to buy anything. Yet investors want to discuss doomsday outcomes these days.
[caption id="attachment_212490" align="alignnone" width="1024"]
Wealth advisers dislike committing or discussing investment scenarios beyond basic lessons about the importance of diversification. (Image: Bruce Mars/ Unsplash)[/caption]
For the first time outside of a world war, a macro shock outside of our ecosystem could be the driver of change. It could lead to more geopolitical conflict, something we couldn’t anticipate. When the public markets force a correction, the hedge funds and mutual funds will see their overall portfolios decline, causing their illiquid investments in tech companies instantly to become a larger percentage of their overall portfolio than originally targeted.
At that point, expect many of them to withdraw from markets, focus on shoring up their public stock positions and perhaps even seek liquidity for their illiquid private equity and venture capital investments.
The flight of public market investors would kill the billion-dollar late-stage funding rounds for “unicorn” tech companies, but could also affect earlier funding rounds that are critical to smaller tech start-ups. Start-up companies face the greatest risks, as well as high-burn-rate companies that assume there’s a lot of cash available for high-spending, high-growth enterprises.
This ominous environment means crypto or virtual currencies haven’t lost their speculative and conspiratorial appeal. The dystopian prospect of some “great reset” is like an eerie trumpet call over a lost battlefield. Financial apocalypse usually involves the collapse of fiat currencies and the emergence of some form of cryptocurrency.
[caption id="attachment_212492" align="alignnone" width="1024"]
When it comes to private banking, establishing a close, communicative and transparent relationship with your financial adviser helps both parties fully understand what constitutes your best interests. (Image: Macau Photo Agency/ Unsplash)[/caption]
Yet government agencies regulate them as assets or securities because, legally speaking, only countries and governments can issue currencies. While cryptocurrencies provide speculative opportunities, they’re too volatile to fulfil the two key roles of a currency: acting as a store of value and medium of transfer to buy and sell goods and services.
Today’s particularly hazardous and distended market demands an investor who can assimilate contradictory points of view in finance, economics and geopolitics and synthesise them into a clear but flexible decision.
Private bankers claim they’re incredibly client-focused, but what this usually means is that their employees are top-notch professionals and deliver competent client service. This doesn’t mean that the clients’ interests necessarily come first. And that is where establishing a close, communicative and transparent relationship with your financial adviser helps both parties fully understand what constitutes your best interests.
(Main and featured image: Rawpixel)
The post Everything You Wanted to Know About Private Banking But Were Afraid to Ask appeared first on Prestige Online - Hong Kong.
Everything You Wanted to Know About Private Banking But Were Afraid to Ask
“Everyone wants to go to heaven, but no one wants to die” is the common lament of private bankers and wealth managers about the contradictory demands of their clients.
Since the 2008 global financial crisis and the current post-Covid period, volatility, risk, returns, expectations and lofty financial market bubbles continue to defy each new high. Wealth advisers are increasingly forced to redefine their roles and find new ways to explain (or not) how they can help you navigate today’s markets.
Expensive equity valuations since 2009 are a regular reason deterring investors from investing in equities. From its March low the S&P 500 jumped by 60 per cent and the Nasdaq index by 75 per cent. Both indices reached their record highs despite a Covid pandemic that continues to plague the global economy and impact corporate earnings. Global gross domestic product and corporate earnings aren’t expected to recover to pre-pandemic levels until late 2021 or even 2022. This perplexing divergence of economic and corporate fundamentals versus the performance of the equity markets creates doubts on valuations and the sustainability of this rally.
High- and ultra-high-net-worth individuals and family offices must continue to seek returns and yields in a market pressuring diminishing returns as global equity markets become overpriced and squeeze out less value by the month. They also must contend with their understanding of volatility versus risk. Markets are volatile in the way they change unpredictably. But investors must clearly understand their personal and family goals and how their entire strategy needs to protect their downside risk.
[caption id="attachment_212489" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Investors must clearly understand their personal and family goals and how their entire strategy needs to protect their downside risk. (Image: Michelle Henderson/ Unsplash)[/caption]
And while the pandemic has changed the way all of us communicate and socialise, it has also forced a rethink about how bankers and clients mutually learn, understand and manage investment goals and relationships. The long client lunches and presentations have given way to teleconferencing apps on desktop and mobile devices as the means for building trust. Today’s video technology represents a vast improvement, but no one knows if it may only be a temporary or tolerable substitute for face-to-face meetings.
Private bankers are increasingly in the business of offering advice across a number of wealth-related areas, such as trusts, succession and long-term portfolio planning. Online brokerages and chatrooms do a cheaper job at stock picking, speculation and other execution needs. Steering clients away from a short-term transaction and trading-oriented relationship with private banking – a particularly bad investment habit in Asia – has started to influence the new generation of wealth that’s studied finance and understands the importance of disciplined, long- term portfolio diversification.
Building a strategic concept of investment and the world takes years; it actually requires a reasonable knowledge and grasp of non-financial topics such as history, economics, culture and politics. You have to create and consume intellectual capital at the same time in order to learn from your investment successes and failures.
Wealth advisers dislike committing or discussing investment scenarios beyond basic lessons about the importance of diversification. Telling a client to sell everything leaves the bank’s relationship manager with a client with no reason to buy anything. Yet investors want to discuss doomsday outcomes these days.
[caption id="attachment_212490" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Wealth advisers dislike committing or discussing investment scenarios beyond basic lessons about the importance of diversification. (Image: Bruce Mars/ Unsplash)[/caption]
For the first time outside of a world war, a macro shock outside of our ecosystem could be the driver of change. It could lead to more geopolitical conflict, something we couldn’t anticipate. When the public markets force a correction, the hedge funds and mutual funds will see their overall portfolios decline, causing their illiquid investments in tech companies instantly to become a larger percentage of their overall portfolio than originally targeted.
At that point, expect many of them to withdraw from markets, focus on shoring up their public stock positions and perhaps even seek liquidity for their illiquid private equity and venture capital investments.
The flight of public market investors would kill the billion-dollar late-stage funding rounds for “unicorn” tech companies, but could also affect earlier funding rounds that are critical to smaller tech start-ups. Start-up companies face the greatest risks, as well as high-burn-rate companies that assume there’s a lot of cash available for high-spending, high-growth enterprises.
This ominous environment means crypto or virtual currencies haven’t lost their speculative and conspiratorial appeal. The dystopian prospect of some “great reset” is like an eerie trumpet call over a lost battlefield. Financial apocalypse usually involves the collapse of fiat currencies and the emergence of some form of cryptocurrency.
[caption id="attachment_212492" align="alignnone" width="1024"] When it comes to private banking, establishing a close, communicative and transparent relationship with your financial adviser helps both parties fully understand what constitutes your best interests. (Image: Macau Photo Agency/ Unsplash)[/caption]
Yet government agencies regulate them as assets or securities because, legally speaking, only countries and governments can issue currencies. While cryptocurrencies provide speculative opportunities, they’re too volatile to fulfil the two key roles of a currency: acting as a store of value and medium of transfer to buy and sell goods and services.
Today’s particularly hazardous and distended market demands an investor who can assimilate contradictory points of view in finance, economics and geopolitics and synthesise them into a clear but flexible decision.
Private bankers claim they’re incredibly client-focused, but what this usually means is that their employees are top-notch professionals and deliver competent client service. This doesn’t mean that the clients’ interests necessarily come first. And that is where establishing a close, communicative and transparent relationship with your financial adviser helps both parties fully understand what constitutes your best interests.
(Main and featured image: Rawpixel)
The post Everything You Wanted to Know About Private Banking But Were Afraid to Ask appeared first on Prestige Online - Hong Kong.
What You Should Know About Investing in Professional Sports Franchises
The investment quality of professional sports has become uncertain and volatile.
First they tell you it’s a business, not a sport. Then when you agree it’s a business, they call it a sport. For decades, professional sports franchises used to be recognised as a reliable long-term investment and an ideal private-equity asset class for ultra-high-net-worth diversification. Recent events have revealed how social media innovations have spawned an entirely new and unpredictable set of risks that threaten their value.
The data points to a grave prognosis. The NBA is suffering the most. In the US, according to Gallup, the percentage of people with a positive impression of sports has declined by 30 points over the past year from +20 to -10 nationwide. NBA first-round playoff viewership ratings plummeted 27 per cent, a 40 per cent drop since 2017-18. A Harris Poll observed that 38 per cent of sports fans explained that the NBA being “too political” is the reason why they’re watching fewer games. That represents a precipitous fall since last summer.
And the NFL is not immune from the social media-driven fan backlash. Sunday Night Football ratings fell by 28 per cent. Fans in attendance are openly booing players. A stunning collapse. Fans appear to be losing interest in sports.
[caption id="attachment_211699" align="alignnone" width="768"]
(Image: Stephane Coudassot/Unsplash)[/caption]
The NFL and NBA are among the most popular sports leagues in the social media universe. Their content represents leading feeds on Twitter and Instagram. And yet despite their proven position in public, their ratings continue to plummet.
But not all leagues are waning. The UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) is experiencing strong gains. Despite basketball playoffs being played on a daily basis, NBA playoff viewership has declined from 2.39 million average viewers in 2019 to 1.68 million in 2020 – a 30 per cent decline. Meanwhile the UFC’s four preliminary fight cards since its emergence from Covid-19 have generated an average of 1.17 million viewers across ESPN and ESPN+. That’s an increase of 30 per cent compared with the viewership of pay-per-view preliminary fights in 2019. Average UFC ratings are trending upwards at a time when the NBA’s are shifting downwards.
More people should be watching pro-sports since many are homebound during the pandemic. Despite the re-opening of cinemas, attendance is falling, as box-office numbers have demonstrated. While it appears that fans resent the direct engagement of players and teams in social justice issues, greater technological forces are at work which may change the very idea of how professional sports are valued and governed.
Professional sports leagues have historically generated healthy, long-term private-equity returns – they’ve been a source of smart diversification for billionaire investors and syndicates. It’s a reputable private-equity class that allows owners a high-profile, celebrity status. They are also platforms for philanthropy and community affairs.
For example, Joseph Tsai, co-founder of Alibaba, is estimated to have paid US$3.3 billion for the Brooklyn Nets and Barclays Center. The previous owner, Mikhail Prokhorov, invested and spent about US$1.5 billion nine years ago. So doubling your money in nine years is a respectable return on a private, billion-dollar investment.
[caption id="attachment_211700" align="alignnone" width="1024"]
(Image: JC Gellidon/ Unsplash)[/caption]
Recent events have pushed owners to decide if they’re investing in a sport, a social organisation or a business in the post-pandemic and Black Lives Matter era. Then are the players actually business partners with the owners who provide all the capital? Owners could have disagreed with player demands to support Black Lives Matter, but at a high cost. The business schism between owners and players threatens to destroy or split the league and make pro sports an unattractive investment.
The outcome for the sport as a business has impaired or confused corporate governance within the NBA as owners have been subverted. Their commissioners are supposed to work for the owners, not the players. Unless this division is resolved, the league’s corporate mission, message and product will be irrevocably divided. Fans will be confused and seek alternate and substitute forms of entertainment.
Players used to audition for teams. Now teams audition for players. The emerging ownership-player-fan relationship model may look nothing like the traditional one. Post-pandemic, league revenues may fail to recover and severely impact their social and financial model.
Social justice is only a current topic in this sports revolution. Technology’s relentless role in subverting and disintermediating established groups and relationships is unpredictable and unstoppable. It empowers and consumes everyone in its path. Social media and mobile computing have opened the door for anyone to either broadcast within their social silo or to the outside world.
Twitter was initially called text messaging for people without friends. But why make friends when you can build a following – and change your world? It’s emerged as an unavoidable platform for the liberation of one and many. And this version of disintermediation is pernicious, because it takes on a life of its own, tearing apart a global brand, a jointly shared common community product such as sport, as frustrated fans retreat into their own social media silos.
This story first appeared on Prestige Singapore
(Main and featured image: Bertrand Gabioud /Unsplash)
The post What You Should Know About Investing in Professional Sports Franchises appeared first on Prestige Online - Hong Kong.
How to Manage Your Finances After Covid-19
The pandemic has triggered massive changes in investor-adviser relationships that we’re only just beginning to understand.
How high-net-worth individuals and family offices work with their financial advisers to protect and grow their money after Covid-19 is today’s most pressing issue. The pandemic will be remembered as a near cataclysmic, black-swan event that continues to shake global economies, markets and industries in ways that are still being worked out. The effects of human isolation have both worsened and changed how people relate to each other and make investment decisions.
Private wealth managers say that extended periods of restricted personal interaction and communication among family members can exacerbate existing tensions about estate succession and wealth management. Mega-rich family dynasties can quickly descend into a showcase for dysfunction, highlighting the witless cruelty of the entitled and the pathetic emotional inadequacy of the endlessly spoiled. The scheming and backstabbing between monstrous and self-entitled family members can become exposed for all to see, as if it was all in a television soap opera. As Tolstoy said in his novel Anna Karenina: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
Governance in a sprawling family office risks being largely based on family relationships rather than institutional policies. A private banker once told me that he asks his wealthy clients, “What is your relationship with your money?” Because how you relate to your money says a lot about your personality, and ultimately decides how succession and management conflicts will be resolved.
[caption id="attachment_210883" align="alignnone" width="1024"]
(Image: Liv Bruce/ Unsplash)[/caption]
For families, the weakness is that most decisions are undergirded by emotion – and that’s unpredictable and undemocratic as a basis for a family’s long-term investment policy. The gut rules as its own tyrant. It doesn’t have to account for itself any more than divine inspiration can be questioned by believers. It’s not open to contradiction because it’s entirely personal. All decisions must flow from the instincts of the singular leader. So everyone must accommodate themselves to unpredictability. And when you’re rich, whatever you say is considered wisdom. Engaging in realistic and critical thinking is a lot more complex and challenging than resorting to clichés.
Governance risks lurk in the market for family-owned, public companies. Activist funds and proxy advisory firms hunt for opportunities to exploit the impaired structures and weakened valuations of family- owned businesses trying to appoint unqualified second- or third- generation descendants as top managers. Balancing the interests of professional managers and the desires of the next generation is an ongoing family risk. Young people love risk because they can’t imagine the consequences, while the older generation love building golden tombs and sealing the rest of the family in with them.
The pandemic has highlighted the importance of sustainability and the fragility of our entire ecosystem and relationships. Never lose sight of the primacy of preserving capital, downside protection and the importance of sustaining a collective and disciplined succession process. Building and maintaining a formal family-governance and individual portfolio-management policy requires effort, especially in a time when normal communication methods are impaired.
Many clients have been forced by the pandemic to remain at home. Travel, in-person meetings and socialising have largely ceased. While videoconferencing capabilities have existed for a long time, they were never the first choice for communication. Now with the pandemic in full swing, it has become a major lifeline, offering an opportunity to improve the dialogue and relationship between clients and their financial advisers.
Advisers have observed how commonplace mobile video-conferencing technology allows them to devote more time to clients because their daily work routine has become disintermediated. At the same time, clients want to be better informed and comforted about their investments and the markets in such an uncertain period.
[caption id="attachment_210884" align="alignnone" width="1024"]
(Image: Stephen Dawson/ Unsplash)[/caption]
The pandemic ironically represents a unique opportunity for high-net-worth individuals and wealth managers to better understand each others’ goals and services.
Carefully discerning how you and your family’s life and investment objectives change over time and market conditions has never been more important. You need to maintain discipline to cultivate and maintain long term goals. Ignore short-term, emotional, reactive trades trying to catch opportunities in a volatile market. However, investors at all times need to fully understand their personal tolerance for risk and expectations of returns.
Despite resistance to change, there is little doubt the post-Covid world will offer a significantly different operating and living environment. Human communications and how technology is used to establish and maintain relationships are undergoing profound changes that have not yet been determined. That more people are more comfortable with working from home will alter the nature of the workplace.
Nonetheless, the post-Covid financial world will still demand some sort of one-on-one, relationship-driven nature in wealth advisory. Consuming information and planning portfolios entirely online has always been possible, but now mobile applications have made it more accessible and conventional. However, clients also need to experience a level of investment intimacy, sympathy and personal service, too.
The digitalisation of financial services has been reshaping the traditional banking landscape for years. But the pandemic has forced all participants to further redefine how humans interact with technology. Innovations may reduce the need for regular face-to-face engagements and force a redefinition of what constitutes a financial relationship and how people make investment decisions.
This story first appeared on Prestige Singapore
(Main and featured image: Shutterstock)
The post How to Manage Your Finances After Covid-19 appeared first on Prestige Online - Hong Kong.
Moving to a new city ? Here are 10 tips to help you settle in
From London to Lausanne, from Strasbourg to Santiago, from east to west and back again, I’ve moved home a lot. I know first-hand how hard…
The post Moving to a new city ? Here are 10 tips to help you settle in appeared first on The Expater.
Moving to a new city ? Here are 10 tips to help you settle in
From London to Lausanne, from Strasbourg to Santiago, from east to west and back again, I’ve moved home a lot. I know first-hand how hard…
The post Moving to a new city ? Here are 10 tips to help you settle in appeared first on The Expater.
10 Hacks for Booking Cheaper Flights
Travel has become one of the most important pastimes of our modern-day lives. Discovering new destinations is exciting, challenging and above all teaches us some…
The post 10 Hacks for Booking Cheaper Flights appeared first on World of Wanderlust.
Alternative Investments: Why Businesses Need to Invest in Their Employees
Every business knows that in order for it to be successful, it needs employees… they’re the bloodline to every business, keeping it alive. So, if that’s the case, why wouldn’t a business invest in their employees by investing in an employee training and development program? For some businesses, it’s not necessarily that they purposely won’t […]
The post Alternative Investments: Why Businesses Need to Invest in Their Employees appeared first on Upscale Living Magazine.
Interesting Fun Facts About Money
Want to know some interesting fun facts about money? Wikipedia defines money as “any item or verifiable record that is generally accepted as payment for [...]
The post Interesting Fun Facts About Money appeared first on Most Expensive Thing.