Description
List of 5 large single family offices in Europe
The number of European family offices—the wealth management firms of affluent families—is steadily increasing. Family investment firms are becoming significant investors in financial markets and alternatives. In the following, we highlight five large single family offices from Europe.
1. Reuben Brothers (UK)
Born in India, the Reuben Brothers are now among the richest people in the UK. They became known to a wider public at the latest when the Reuben Brothers acquired shares in the British soccer club Newcastle United in 2021. Through their family office, the brothers hold numerous assets. These include retail properties, hotels, data centres, renewable energy projects, private equity investments and more. In addition, The Reuben Foundation was established in 2002 with an initial endowment of $100 million. The foundation supports charitable causes in the United Kingdom and beyond.
Update 2022: In June 2022, the Reuben Brothers family office announced the acquisition of the delayed Admiralty Arch hotel development. The building, originally constructed by King Edward, will be operated under the Waldorf Astoria brand.
Update 2024: In December 2023, the family office sent the luxury Manhattan hotel “The Chatwal” in default after initiating a foreclosure proceeding after the hotel defaulted on a loan provided by the family office. The UK-based single family office is now first in line to take over the hotel.
2. Wirtgen Invest (Germany)
After Stefan and Jürgen Wirtgen sold the machine manufacturer of the same name to John Deere in 2017, they increasingly made a name for themselves as investors. Wirtgen Invest is one of the most active family offices in Germany and can score points with a broad diversification of the portfolio. The company develops and invests in high-class real estate, invests globally in renewable energies, acts as a private equity player and is active on the capital markets.
Update 2023: On December 21, 2022, ABO Wind announced that it will build a 50MW solar park in Greece for Wirtgen Invest. The park will be connected to the grid in the summer of 2023. Thereby, the Wirtgen single family office shows once again its major role as major renewable energy single family office.
3. Canica (Norway)
As Chairman of the Board and major shareholder of the Orkla conglomerate, Stein Erik Hagen is one of the richest Norwegians. His wealth is estimated at over $3 billion. Through his family office, Canica, Hagen makes investments in industrial, financial, and real estate. The regional focus of Canica’s investments is Northern Europe and the family office has offices in Oslo and Pfäffikon, Switzerland. Among the largest industrial investments (besides the shares in Orkla) are Komplett, Anora and Jernia. Apart from that, real estate assets alone have a value of about $1 billion.
4. Baltisse (Belgium)
Filip Balcaen has built up the Belgian flooring company Balta Group until its sale to a British private equity fund. Since then, the Balcaen single-family office Baltisse has belonged to the most important family office investors in Belgium and Europe. Baltisse is, amongst others, investing in private equity, real estate and capital markets. PE investments include Polflam (glass manufacturer from Poland), Recticel (thermal insulations firm from Belgium) and Visio Healthcare (a D2C healthcare firm).
Update 2024: In the beginning of the year, the Belgian family office sold an office building in Luxembourg for €175M to the family office of Zara founder Amancio Ortega.
5. Julen Group (Switzerland)
The Swiss Julen Group, which is the single family office of Mario Julen and his family. The family office owns and operates several high-class Swiss hotels, restaurants and nightlife locations, especially in the Zermatt region. Amongst them are the Hotel Zermama, the Mamacita Club or the currently developed Ritz Carlton Zermatt.
Information included in our list
- Country of main location
- Company name
- Contact data (URL, address, e-mail, telephone number, executives)*
- Family information (Name, Estimated family assets in M€, Holding structure)*
- Real Estate Focus (Yes/No) / Real Estate Focus Details / Example Real Estate Investments
- Venture Capital Focus (Yes/No) / Details on Venture Capital Focus / Examples of Venture Capital Investments
- Private Equity Focus (Yes/No) / Details on Private Equity Focus / Examples of Private Equity Investments
- Financial assets focus (Yes/No)
- Renewable Energies Focus (Yes/No)
- Other focus (art, forest and agricultural areas, etc.)
- Creation and final review of Excel entries
*Values may be missing if some data points are not publicly available. The “largest single family offices” are defined by the wealthiest European families who actively invest through companies and for whom reliable information is available. With regular, free updates and extensions, we constantly improve the quality of the information.
Picture Source: Aron von de Pol
Aron –
Bought this list to find investors for our client, a mid-sized industrial company. The list of familyofficehub helped us to find dozens of suitable family investors within minutes. We sorted the list by private equity investment (yes/no). Results were either PE focused family offices or family holdings which build up their portfolio.
Two things could be improved:
– could be more sfos from Nordics, spain – also a middle east list would be nice
– there are really lots of information, which is not bad, but there could be also are more condensed version. we appreciated the depth, but it took us some minutes to understand all the columns
An –
Great list with extraordinary data quality, many of the major sfos are listed (I can say that with confidence as an industry insider).Nevertheless I’ll only give four stars since a few SFOs are missing.
FORGET –
Very useful database in a segment which lacks transparency.
Good to have an estimate of the size of the FOs.
Our local salespeople were very happy to find names they didn’t know.
Commitment to enlarge the list.
Caroline (verified owner) –
After using familyofficehub’s European database for a few months now, I can say with confidence that it is of strong quality (especially compared to competing US products) and that the team is constantly trying to expand it with relevant additional investors. I believe this is probably the best source of European family office data on the market today, which is a real achievement considering familyofficehub only launched at the beginning of the year. Do keep it up!
Benjamin E Catling (verified owner) –
Decent information on family offices is incredibly hard to find and this is the best source I’ve come across. just having the list is useful but the detailed information on VC investements was a great help to me looking for investors four a startup I’m working with. The information is not all there as would be expected for such a conciously secretive world but as I understand it they are constantly updating the database.
Jan was extremely helpfull with my questions before buying and when I made some mistakes ordering the wrong items Jan helped me sort things out in a flash. Super impressed with the customer service. Very refreshing!
Max F. (verified owner) –
Very good database. 4* because a few e-mails are missing and some e-mails are “info@” and not specific contacts but these instances are quite marginal.
Haven’t found any other such database elsewhere.
+ The team (founders) is very responsive and helpful.
Keep it up
Matteo Marzagalli (verified owner) –
I bought the list and I immediately found it very useful: easy to analyse and fast to check every record.
After two weeks of my purchase, I automatically received the updated version, that it is absolutely a must in this kind of service. I would definitely recommend it!
Constantin Pellissier (verified owner) –
As a French-Belgian M&A adviser, this list has been super useful for a significant fundraising which I needed to launch on a European scale and not strictly on my home base. In short, super valuable data and also great update service! Thank you FamilyOfficeHub!