Let’s not beat around the proverbial bush: 2025 was a crazy year. Trump’s return (and threats of taking over Greenland and Canada!), tariff mayhem and trade disruption, a new government in Ottawa, worries of recession, the spectacular (and bubbly looking) stock market euphoria over artificial intelligence, and on and on. And yet, to paraphrase the late, great Kris Kristofferson, this old world kept on turning.
In our little corner of that world, it was, in fact, a very good year. For those of our readers who are interested in such things, our content platform—the only one solely dedicated to covering the issues, events and personalities in the family office ecosystem in Canada—saw remarkable growth.
- We published more than 300 articles (five editorial stories just about every week, plus member content).
- We launched eight new Special Reports on issues ranging from philanthropy and technology to the next-gen and women in family offices.
- Canadianfamilyoffices.com attracted a third of a million site visits and more than half a million page views.
- Offsite, our LinkedIn community grew to nearly 15,000 followers.
- Our e-mail newsletters (more than 150 of them) were sent out to a subscriber base of nearly 8,500.
- We hosted six live online panel events, exploring issues ranging from philanthropy and women in family offices to real estate and alternative investments.
For a highly verticalized media outlet that covers what is still a small-ish niche of the financial services industry, those are quite robust numbers.
Catching a wave of interest in family offices
What matters more to us than crowing about them, however, is the question of the trends that are driving them. Why the surge in interest in Canadian family offices? That it is surging is apparent not just in our own site numbers, but also from our conversations with those in and around the family office ecosystem. From venture capitalists and fund managers to charities and policymakers, people are eager to talk and learn about family offices in a way that, quite frankly, surprises us a little bit (in a good way, of course).
One obvious factor is the substantial and growing economic footprint of ultra-high-net-worth families. This trend has been particularly remarkable in the world’s two largest economies. In the U.S., the share of total personal net worth held by the top one per cent increased from around 20 per cent in the mid-1970s to nearly 35 per cent in 2024. In China, the share held by one-per-centers has grown from about 20 per cent in 2001 (when China gained Most Favored Nation status with the U.S., allowing it to join the World Trade Organization) to more than 30 per cent in 2024.
In both countries, and indeed around the world, the concentration of wealth at the higher end of the distribution curve has become a political issue (which is perhaps reflected in the name of the organization that compiles these statistics: the World Inequality Database). Yet, in Canada at least, the trend, while occurring, is less dramatic: according to the WID, one-per-centers’ share of total wealth in this country has grown by “only” about five percentage points over the past 50 years. We will leave it to sharper minds than ours to consider whether that is a good thing or a bad thing.
In any event, we would argue that the kind of capital UHNW families control is at least as important to the rising interest in family offices and their economic impact as the amount they hold. Generally, family offices as investors are considered more patient and long-term-oriented than public markets or traditional private equity firms, while also more proactive and more willing to take on concentration and other risks than, say, pensions and other institutional investors are. They also tend to be active and engaged philanthropists.
In a country starved for business investment, and whose much-vaunted social safety net is under pressure from growing demand and government’s fiscal constraints, the potential for family offices to play an outsized role in capital formation and societal impact is perhaps one big reason they are attracting so much attention.
Upcoming for 2026
At Canadian Family Offices, we will dutifully pay close attention to those and other trends throughout the year. We will also continue to publish Special Reports, some of which will revisit such topics of perennial interest as real estate and philanthropy. (NB: The latter will kick off in February, and part of it is of our second annual philanthropy survey; we will be launching the survey in the coming weeks, and we invite you to participate.) Beyond those, we plan to create new and focused reports on other issues, including family office education, digital risk management, venture capital and global markets, as well as a series on the state of multi-family offices in Canada that will coincide with the publication of our annual MFO study.
This past year, we have changed up our content lineup to evolve along with the industry we cover. We posted more videos (including Luke Hansen-MacDonald’s excellent podcast, “Beyond the Family Business”) and welcomed regular columnists to the fold, including Tom McCullough, John Szabo, David Israelson and Ian McGugan. We also launched some new newsletters on specific subjects, including philanthropy. Look for new developments on all these fronts as the year unfolds.
More broadly, a desire to connect with other families and FOs is a consistent refrain we hear in our conversations with family office leaders and in our research. So, in 2026, we will work hard to engage with the community and to strengthen our platform and its content, which we hope will make it easier for family offices and those who support them to share experiences and opportunities and to learn from one another.
If you would like to contact us, the best avenue is via email (we are an assiduously virtual operation) at newsroom@canadianfamilyoffices.com. We rely on the input, engagement and expertise of our readers, so your feedback is always welcome and appreciated.
Joe Chidley is Managing Editor of Canadian Family Offices. His 35 years of experience in journalism and communications includes nearly a decade as editor of Canadian Business magazine and as a senior writer and associate publisher at Maclean’s newsmagazine. He served as a columnist at the Financial Post and as editor-in-chief of Content Works, Postmedia’s commercial content division. He also led the corporate and public affairs department at a major Toronto-based public relations firm for several years.
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