Family-office gold rush spurs conference craze

As the rich have gotten richer, family offices have exploded in popularity, numbering 8,000 worldwide and managing some $3.1 trillion in assets, according to Deloitte. Family office-tailored events and conferences have followed. 

There were 123 such family-office conferences in 2024, and nearly twice as many — 244 — are scheduled for this year, according to Dakota Marketplace, a research firm for investment sales professionals. 

“People are interested in this world because it’s growing so fast, and it’s a pool of capital,” said Paul Carbone, co-founder and vice chairman of Pritzker Private Capital and a member of the steering committee for a family-office initiative at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. The initiative hosts gatherings for family offices and said it’s seen an uptick in demand.  

“One of the things that was clear was that families are interested in having a dialogue among themselves, where there’s shared experiences, shared challenges, shared opportunities, where they can compare notes,” Carbone said.  

Carbone divides these events into four categories: commercial conferences, events sponsored by major institutions such as banks, gatherings organized by families, and academic family gatherings.

“There’s trillions of dollars in the family space, and relatively little directly goes into the private equity world,” he added. “If users of capital can tap into that sizable pool of capital, it can behoove them and benefit them.” 

Raphael “Raffi” Amit, professor of management at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, has witnessed the momentum firsthand. The Wharton Global Family Alliance, founded and led by Amit, has hosted family-office gatherings for more than two decades.  

Wharton’s gatherings are intimate, capped at 60 participants from family offices, and not sponsored. But the lion’s share of family-office conferences is dominated by sponsors and vendors, he said. 

“Families hate — according to our survey — when they go to these conferences and all these vendors bombard them with all sorts of offers,” Amit said. “We organize it for families, by families, and so as a result, the content is very, very different.” 

All the same, event sponsors are eager to get the attention of this elite clientele.  

This week marked the return of Anthony Ritossa, a well-known figure in European and Middle East family-office circles. The former hedge-fund salesman was behind the 24th Annual Global Family Office Investment Summit in Miami, a two-day bash Feb. 18-19 at the Trump International Beach Resort. 

Ritossa, who for many years went by “Sir Anthony,” built a name hosting conferences for family offices and investors eager to court them. He has since dropped the “Sir” and was the subject of a yearlong investigation and 2022 article by Vanity Fair, which raised questions about the legitimacy of his credentials and business practices.  

Vanity Fair, citing past attendees of the conferences, reported that Ritossa had misrepresented his background and charged sponsors between $18,000 and $200,000 on hopes of landing family-office investments that rarely materialized. 

Ritossa described the Vanity Fair reporting as “inaccurate” but declined to comment to CNBC on any specifics. When reached for comment by CNBC, he repeatedly offered invitations to the Miami conference with a ticket “provided gratis” to “experience it firsthand,” which CNBC did not accept. 

After the Vanity Fair article, Ritossa hosted another family-office summit in February 2023 and then largely stepped back from the spotlight. He sold one of his limited liability companies to the Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute, according to the American think tank’s chairman, Lakshmi Narayanan.

Ritossa did not address questions from CNBC about the sale of his business. 

His latest summit series kicked off in Dubai with events in October and December 2024 emceed by an anchor for Dubai-based CNBC Arabia, a licensee of CNBC that operates the Arabic language business news channel. Attendees included sheikhs and the CEO of the Raffles Family Office, Chi-man Kwan. 

The impression, at least on the surface, is that Ritossa has mounted a comeback. 

The Miami event invitation said the summit would bring together a coterie of more than 250 high-net-worth individuals, family offices, members of Middle East royalty, and others, representing more than $1 trillion in investable assets. The list of 148 speakers and honored guests included some family-office principals and staff but was a largely disparate cohort, with speakers representing various industries, from crypto to medical tourism. Miami Mayor Francis Suarez was interviewed for a fireside chat. 

For some attendees, the reputation of conference guests, not the hosts, is most important.  

“Within the family-office community, events are more about which families show up than who organized it,” said Jonathan Zaback, co-founder of public relations firm Impact Partners, which represents several summit speakers. “People still attend because of who they know will be there. Families go where they feel they will meet other people and friends. For some, these events are one of the few times a year they get to see each other.”