Inside the AYU Family Office Summit: Key Takeaways from Chiswick House
Gus Morison, CEO & Founder and Lucy Surman, Associate Director
Episode 12 of the AYU Family Office Podcast
Episode 12 of the AYU Family Office Podcast is a special debrief. Rather than a guest interview, Gus Morrison and Lucy Sermon unpack the highlights, insights, and moments that defined the AYU Family Office Summit held at Chiswick House and Gardens in London.
The Event: Chiswick House and Gardens
AYU took over Chiswick House a grand English country house set in landscaped gardens and created a private tented village with fire pits, a cigar lounge, GP meeting rooms, and a main panel tent. Sponsors included JP Morgan, Jersey Finance, RFA, Alphasense, and Canoe Intelligence.
The event was deliberately curated through the AYU Approved Family Office (AFO) programme, with a meaningful number of applications declined. The GP tent was capped at around 16 participants, each matched to attending family offices based on prior survey data about what they actually wanted to see. "Every GP came out exhausted because they were back to back in meetings all day."
Panel 1: Direct Deals, Co-Investments and Family Office Collaboration
Chaired by Dan Page of Cornerman, the opening panel addressed the growing trend of family offices doing direct deals and co-investments with each other, bypassing traditional fund structures. Notes are available on the AYU platform for members.
Panel 2: Compensation and Careers in Family Offices
One of the most candid conversations of the day. Family office compensation is notably opaque. The headline finding: family office roles often lag behind equivalent private equity and hedge fund compensation. The draw tends to be alignment of values, lifestyle, and mission rather than raw financial incentive.
Panel 3: Are Family Offices Leaving the UK?
A high calibre panel including Jeremy Dunn (UBS Family Office), Marcus Baker (Rothschilds), and Alan Cope MP examined whether wealthy families are leaving the UK. The verdict was more nuanced and more positive than current rhetoric suggests. "Family offices plan in generations, not election cycles." While movement to Dubai, Switzerland, Milan and Florida is real, the UK's structural advantages remain compelling for long-term oriented families.
Panel 4: Next Gen — The $84 Trillion Transfer
The next gen panel brought together high-profile next gen principals including Alex Fink, son of Lord Fink (former CEO of Man Group). The defining statistic: an estimated $84 trillion in wealth will transfer to the next generation — the largest wealth transfer in history. The majority of new wealth holders will be women, signalling a structural shift from patriarch to matriarch models in many family offices.
Panel 5: Manager Selection
Tom Pontin of Quantstream chaired a panel of family office allocators. The standout framework: Agnes de Roya's Five Ps — People, Performance, Process, Purpose, and Price. Practical advice for managers pitching to family offices: keep decks to three pages. Lead with what you do on page one. "If you can't define what you do clearly, you probably shouldn't be pitching."
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