v11i2 Dethleffsen

Single Family Offices are a growing structure designed to help families manage their wealth. This study aims to shed light on the factors influencing the investment strategies of single family offices. The factors analyzed are the impact of governance, family involvement and entrepreneurship. As families are all very individual, so are their single family offices. The influence of the selected factors varies greatly from case to case. Despite their great heterogeneity, a number of similarities can be identified. Due to the small size of the family, the majority of the families surveyed have no written family governance. Final decision-making power is always in the hands of the family, even when non-family members are CEOs of the SFO. Generational differences in interests and risk preferences have a significant impact on investment strategies. Although research emphasizes the importance of fostering entrepreneurship within the family, most families do not actively promote the entrepreneurial spirit within their families. The study concludes with a discussion in which the newly generated data support existing theories in some cases and contradict them in others.