China Minsheng Bank Private Banking
Although family offices are fairly new in China’s private banking sector, there is no question which bank is the leader in this area: China Minsheng Bank’s private bank. It was one of the first to open family offices for ultra-high net-worth clients.
Led by chairman and executive director Qi Hong, the bank has established trusts and offices for more than 20 families and their businesses since 2014. It works closely with entrepreneurs, helping them to set up family offices with a clear firewall between the family and the family enterprises. The bank stresses the need for demarcation between the founder or founding family and the business as wealth is transferred from one generation to the next. The bank also tailors family offices to suit customers’ needs, whether helping that is with industrial expansion, managing and preserving market value, initiating mergers and acquisitions, or transferring wealth to the next generation.
The bank focuses on customers with investment assets of more than Rmb50 million ($7.5 million) or family net assets of more than Rmb500 million. These clients include first-generation entrepreneurs, second-generation heirs, newly minted millionaires who made their fortunes from stock options, public listings or the sale of assets, particularly those in the technology sector, and peak performers such as movie stars, athletes and successful artists.
Minsheng recently helped a family with more than Rmb10 billion in assets, including equity in two listed companies, to write a family charter and set up a family trust. The charter sets out procedures and helps families to avoid conflicts of interest.
Minsheng’s offering includes a range of advisory services such as inheritance management, family and corporate governance, wealth assurance and risk management, legal compliance, tax planning and family stewardship.
In 2015, Minsheng helped a Chinese billionaire to set up a family charity fund with Rmb5 billion in assets. The billionaire is a self-made success story from Fujian province who built his business empire from scratch. His charity fund is still considered a model and benchmark in China today. After the promulgation of China’s Charity Law in 2016, the bank also took the lead in helping a family to form the nation’s first charity trust.
Minsheng is also taking the lead in designing what will be China’s first family art trust, a new model of family trusts, which typically rely on equity, real estate and insurance funds as primary assets.