The family office pivot to public equities is a succession trade

Citi Wealth's 2026 Global Family Office Report pairs two findings that should be read together. Nearly half of the 351 single-family offices surveyed across 41 countries increased their public equity exposure over the past year, making listed markets the top destination for new capital and global developed equities the most favored asset class for incremental net allocations, and the same survey describes a near-term generational transition its respondents are not yet fully prepared to manage, one that has moved from the back burner to the board agenda. Citi calls the allocation shift a recalibration rather than a retreat; set beside the succession finding, it looks more like a portfolio being made liquid while the handover it has to survive is still being worked out.

The sample is small enough to count: 351 offices, out of a client base the firm's Global Family Office Group puts at more than 1,900 worldwide, surveyed in June and July, and nothing in the results says family offices are quitting private markets. Most still hold private equity, fixed income and cash, with allocations described as well diversified; what moved was where fresh money goes, and the report's own explanation is a preference for liquidity and flexibility while the macro picture stays unsettled.

Then there is the hierarchy of fears, where the year's turn shows up: inflation displaced the trade disputes and tariffs that topped the prior year's list and now ranks as the leading concern, with interest rate developments, financial system stability and market volatility rounding out the worries. The response has been short-duration income assets, quality equity exposures and inflation-sensitive diversifiers, a portfolio assembled to defend purchasing power rather than chase it. "In an environment where returns are increasingly driven by fundamentals rather than valuation expansion, quality matters more than ever," the report notes, and that sentence is the sound of a client base that has stopped paying up for a story.

The allocation tables cannot show the ownership question: an illiquid book needs a decision-maker, and a listed book can be split. When a cohort reports a near-term transition it is not ready for and steers new capital into assets that price daily, the reasonable inference, and it is an inference rather than a finding, is that liquidity has become the portfolio's answer to that question. The report explains the shift in market terms, macro and flexibility, and that explanation is probably true as far as it goes; it is also the book you build when you cannot yet say who owns the private positions.

Citi has been buying the advice side of that problem: in August it hired J.P. Morgan's trusts and estates chief, Adam Clark, who ran a 500-professional global trusts and estates operation, to lead its planning chain from November, and it has been picking its spots in the ultra-high-net-worth relationship all year, referring the concierge function out while HSBC bundles it in. Two banks answered the same demand, and only one is spending on the part of the relationship that compounds. A survey of 351 offices is a calling card for the group that produced it, and worth reading with that in mind, but it is also the most detailed public read available on what those offices do with their money, and on that question the sample is specific enough to take at face value.

The private-markets half of the report complicates the story usefully: private equity still draws substantial capital, direct investing is rising and growth-stage opportunities are pulling attention, but selectivity has increased, and the report says the emphasis now lands on sourcing relationships, sector expertise and differentiated access, with connectivity named as a distinct competitive advantage; that is a procurement list. The scarce good in private markets has always been the seat, and the offices on the client side of the table know precisely which of the two they are paying for.

Buying liquidity ahead of a handover is the right trade, and the industry should read this pivot as a demand signal. The offices adding public equity because returns now rest on fundamentals and because they want optionality are the same offices that will examine gates, lockups and the terms of illiquid vehicles with matching scrutiny at the next commitment. As this publication has argued, the private-markets on-ramp is an operating problem before it is a fundraising one, and a gateway that cannot show a client a statement after the capital is committed will lose the next allocation; private credit's first clearing prices, on the same reasoning, come from management turnover and secondary sales rather than NAV prints. A family office that has just bought itself a liquid book has begun pricing the gate, and platforms treating the year's equity line as a rotation to wait out will be the ones surprised when the next private commitment arrives on terms that are no longer theirs to set.

Watch the private commitments line in the 2027 edition, not the equity line. The offices that answered this survey have told the industry what reachable money is worth to them, and the build-out that spent years selling access will find out whether it was listening.