Canada

While the unsettling multiple whammy of COVID-19 pandemic, a global inflation spike, rising interest rates, geopolitical perils and potential looming recession have driven a reduction in investment risk towards a more conservative and balanced strategy, North American Family Offices have nevertheless developed a taste for tech.

The passing of Queen Elizabeth II, the longest-reigning monarch in British history, has left the world in shock. For many generations, The Queen was the only monarch they had ever known, a constant source of resolve who lived a life of extraordinary dedication and service.

As the newly appointed English prime minister Liz Truss said: “It is the passing of the second Elizabethan age. The Queen was the rock on which modern Britain was built.”

Shipping billionaire Rodolphe Saade opposes French windfall tax plan
Rodolphe Saade, the billionaire head of multi-generational family-owned shipping giant CMA CGM SA, has vocally opposed a plan by French lawmakers to impose a windfall tax on corporate profits to moderate the impact of inflation.

CMA CGM SA, the world’s third-largest container carrier, has seen its profits rise dramatically following strong global demand for consumer goods resulting in shipping rates being raised more than ten-fold during the Covid-19 pandemic.

In 1925, Vincent Massey, the scion of one of the wealthiest families in Canada, did something that Ed Rogers today would find unthinkable.

He quit.

Massey (pictured below right) was the fourth-generation heir to his family’s Massey-Harris farm equipment company, then already well on its way to becoming Canada’s first truly global firm. Despite this, Massey decided that his future lay not in tractors, but in public service and philanthropy. He later became governor general of Canada.