News Briefs – Pritzker’s payday; Murdoch family office to raise fund; top 1% own 45 of total household wealth…

Pritzker family office gets big payday with hotel sale 

John Pritzker’s Geolo Capital has sold its holding in Ventana Big Sur, a luxury hotel resort near Monterey, California, for $148 million. Geolo Capital acquired Ventana in 2015 and then renovated and reopened the property in 2017. Pritzker said the sale represented a record price for a resort hotel in the US. 

Murdoch’s family office wants to raise a fund, report

Lupa Systems, the New York City-based family office of James Murdoch, a son of the media tycoon, Rupert Murdoch, is apparently looking to raise a fund backed by rich Indians to invest in businesses in the sub-continent, according to Bloomberg. 

Earlier this year, Lupa Systems partnered with Star India chairman and CEO and president of Walt Disney APAC, Uday Shankar, to invest in businesses in India. The latest move by Murdoch looks like an extension of this co-investment effort. 

Dolby family office-backed group enters research collaboration in quest for Alzheimer’s treatments

Cure Network Dolby Acceleration Partners has entered into a research collaboration with Takeda Pharmaceutical Company to develop small molecules targeting tau, a protein involved in Alzheimer’s disease and other major brain disorders.

“Lowering overall tau levels is a very promising therapeutic approach,” said David Dolby, CEO of Dolby Family Ventures and CNDAP board member, a statement accompanying the announcement. 

CNDAP was founded in 2015 as a partnership between Cure Network Ventures, a corporation wholly owned by Gladstone Institutes, and the Dolby family office. The Gladstone Institutes is an independent, nonprofit life science research organization that has an academic affiliation with the University of California, San Francisco.

Wealth and family office platform gets further funding

Addepar, a wealth management data platform that has many family offices as clients, has received $150 million in a Series F funding round, which values the business in excess of $2 billion. 

Started by Jon Lonsdale and Jason Mirra in 2009, the latest funding round is from D1 Capital Partners, the investment group set up by hedge fund billionaire Daniel Sundheim in 2018. Could it be about to list? 

Wealth creation continues apace

Wealth creation in 2020 was largely immune to the challenges facing the world due to the actions taken by governments and central banks to mitigate the economic impact of COVID-19, according to the recently released Credit Suisse’s Global Wealth Report. 

Total global wealth grew by 7.4% and wealth per adult rose by 6% to reach another record high of $79,952. Overall, the countries most affected by the pandemic have not fared worse in terms of wealth creation. 

Credit Suisse has estimated that the bottom 50% of adults in the global wealth distribution together accounted for less than 1% of total global wealth at the end of 2020. In contrast, the richest decile (top 10% of adults) owns 82% of global wealth and the top percentile has nearly half (45%) of all household assets. Their wealth has risen as a result of monetary easing by central banks to protect the world from a pandemic-induced recession could well lead to political protest.