Family offices in transition: Navigating deals, allocations and the next era of growth
From 16-19 September 2025, SuperReturn Asia kicks off in Singapore for its 20th installment. For the first time, it's co-located with three other SuperReturn events: SuperReturn CFO/COO Asia, SuperReturn Energy and Infrastructure Asia and SuperReturn Family Office Asia. Ahead of speaking at Family Office Asia, we caught up with SuperReturn LP council member and seasoned investor, Lixia Zhu, Principal, 76Columbus Family Office, about the evolving landscape of family offices in Asia, how AI is reshaping the industry and how to choose the best partnerships for succesful investments.
How can family offices get into the prime deals and position themselves for growth?
Access is built, not bought.
When we institutionalized 76Columbus, one lesson was immediate: access to the best deals isn’t purchased with a check, but earned through credibility and consistency. Prime deals don’t circulate on mailing lists, but flow through trust-based networks.
Visibility, alignment, and reputation matter. We show up, by contributing to curated ecosystems like Token2049, Consensus Hong Kong, AI Rush, and building communities like the New Age Family Investment Club. Those platforms position us in the conversations that matter.
Equally critical is thematic clarity. We focus on digital assets, deep-tech, and Asia, MENA, and U.S. corridor growth. That sharpness naturally draws in co-investors with adjacent expertise. We don’t chase every deal; we attract the ones that fit.
Allocation is a big question: How has the strategy of Asian family offices evolved amid recent volatility?
Since 1990s, the Global Economic Policy Uncertainty Index hit a record 580 in 2025, almost double the peak during the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition to macro risks, and trade tariffs, those volatilities have accelerated a more structured, global, and policy aware allocation strategy across Asian family offices.
Source: “An Index of Global Economic Policy Uncertainty,” Steven J. Davis at www.PolicyUncertainty.com
In response, Asian family offices have evolved to three folds:
- Policy aware geographic diversification: allocating across jurisdictions such as U.S. UAE, and HK for digital assets, while increasing exposure to Middle East for real estates.
- Barbell portfolio construction: balancing defensive assets like bonds and gold on one end, with high conviction illiquids bets such as PE/VC and direct investments on the other.
- Thematic alternatives led by next-gen family leaders: scaling internal teams, emphasizing direct deals and co-investments in emerging technologies like digital assets, healthtech, and robotics.
UBS finds 68% of family offices now prioritize global diversification due to top concerns around geopolitical tenson and inflation. Dao Insights indicates Chinese investors ranked 4th in Dubai’s real estate market in 2024, up from 9th place in 2023. Meanwhile, Campden’s 2024 reports on 40% of Asian family offices’ alternative investments are through direct investments.
How do you decide how much of the portfolio should be in PE? And active vs passive management?
At 76Columbus, PE allocation begins with intent: are we solving for long-term alpha, strategic exposure, or trusted relationships? That framing drives structure.
Some capital goes to established managers, specifically those with a track record of real cash returns. As Bain’s 2024 Global PE report highlights, DPI have fallen to 11% of NAV, the lowest level in a decade. This liquidity crunch has had tangible consequences: global deal activity has slowed, while the secondaries market surged to $102 billion in H1 2025, a 43% YoY increase.
In response, we prioritize structures with clear exit paths:
- Funds with a proven DPI track record
- SPVs that offer control, faster liquidity, and operational proximity. One of our SPV Deals with Arkview Capital in New York delivered a 2.9X return in just 15 months.
At 76Columbus, PE makes up about 25% of our portfolio, nested within a 70% alternatives allocation. Of that, roughly 60% is via SPVs, with the balance in direct fund exposure. That mirrors APAC trends: UBS reports family offices in the region allocate about 21% to PE, split nearly evenly between direct (11%) and funds (10%).
Passive exposure may offer simplicity, but it often underdelivers value creation. True value creation goes beyond just writing a check, but from active participation by offering networks, resources, and convictions that help businesses grow.
You specialise in tech and founded an AI startup. How is AI impacting family offices, and what challenges are they facing?
AI is not just changing where we invest, but reshaping how family offices operate.
Founding Ciphorama, a blockchain infrastructure company intersecting with machine learning neural networks attention mechanism for crypto data referencing and deep learning, gave me a technical insider’s view of AI’s practical power in generating business and investment insights.
Family offices are now exploring AI on multiple fronts:
- As an investment theme: unlocking new investment opportunities and redefining due diligence, from Navida to ChatGPT.
- As an internal enabler: helping traditional groups connect siloed data across their own entities and reveal cross enterprise value.
- As an operational tool: improving office workflow automation and compliance and unlocking compliance and risk management.
But AI is inherently technical, and not always easy to grasp.
Warren Buffett put it best: “Only invest in what you understand.” Families that take time to learn and integrate AI thoughtfully will unlock its promise. Those who chase the narrative as hype risk will be left with little more than noise.
You’ve spoken about how partnership is key in family offices. How do you find the right ones?
It’s good to be trusted and that trust is earned. At 76Columbus, we don’t view partnerships as transactions, but long-term alignments built on trust, integrity, and shared values. The strongest relationships rarely begin with a pitch, but start with a conversation.
It begins with clarity on our own strategy, including our asset allocation priorities, geographic focus, and target asset types in each region. Once that’s clear, we focus on finding alignment, not just opportunity.
Many of our most valuable partnerships started informally: at private forums, curated LP/GP meetings, and trusted referrals. Co‑investments are central to our model, with 42.5% of family offices globally now adopt this approach because it offers more than just capital, but insight, access, and perspective that create additional value of every deal.
Earlier this year, we partnered with a prominent UAE family (under NDA) to co-invest and scale companies into this region. That relationship was sparked at a curated digital asset focused family office event in Dubai hosted by our New Age Family Office Club. Today, we are co-structuring a national GDP-aligned investment framework focused on direct deals and regional value creation.
What are you most looking forward to at SuperReturn Family Office Asia?
SuperReturn is more than a conference, but a convergence point. For us, the real value lies in the quality of dialogues, both on and off the stage. The impactful conversations often happen in the hallways, where ideas spark collaboration, and collaboration evolves into co-investments, partnership, and lifelong friendships.
At 76Columbus, we focus on frontier technology such as digital assets and deep-tech, and cross‑border growth, especially along the Asia, MENA, and the U.S. corridor. SuperReturn is where those worlds reconnect. It’s a place to meet peers, engage with emerging GPs, explore investment themes, and reconnect with old friends, while making new ones.
This September in Singapore, SupereReturn Asia will feature both the Family Office Summit and a curated LP/GP allocate program. We’re bringing voices from our New Age Family Investment Club into the dialogue, blending next-gen insights with reginal middle Eastern perspective, contributing to a broader conversation among global private capital leaders.
As Warren Buffett famously said, ‘Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.’ SuperReturn is where many of those seeds get planted, for deals, for partnerships, and for the generations to come.