It’s a view shared by many of his Asian family office peers. Government subsidies for jobs and loans that have helped prevent broader meltdowns are set to end in the coming months, and vaccines may take years to be fully deployed. When combined with continuing geopolitical strife between China and the US, that’s left many of the region’s wealthiest clans feeling anxious.
For Kuok Meng Xiong’s family office, 2020 was a bumper year with investments in technology startups like Bytedance Inc. doing well throughout the pandemic. Despite this good fortune and promises of a vaccine, the grandson of billionaire Robert Kuok remains wary about private deals in the year ahead.
“We anticipate Covid may be protracted even with the vaccine, and travel may not go back to pre-March 2020 days so the early-stage startups would be challenging,” he said, stipulating that he only spoke for his tech-focused remit at K3 Ventures Pte and not his family’s Shangri-La hotel empire.
