(May 28): UBS Group AG‘s family office clients are curbing their financial exposure to the US as part of a revamp in how they manage the world’s shifting macroeconomic landscape.
Almost a third of 307 private investment firms for the ultra-wealthy surveyed this year through late March said they’ve cut or plan to reduce allocations to assets held in US dollars, Switzerland’s biggest bank said in a report released Thursday.
About half of the money managers also said they’re overexposed to the greenback, even as North America still makes up the largest slice of their portfolios by region, according to UBS’ 2026 Global Family Office Report.
“We are in a situation where clients fear that they are - at least close to half of them say that - overexposed to the US dollar,” said Maximilian Kunkel, chief investment officer for global family and institutional wealth, UBS Global Wealth Management. “We know that the dollar is still overvalued against many other major currencies.”
The same sentiment for other major currencies, such as the British pound and euro, was less than 10%. Family offices in Europe and Asia-Pacific represented the two largest groups of survey respondents.
The responses from the firms — which manage US$1.3 billion ($1.7 billion) on average — signal how the world’s super rich are adapting their portfolios to heightened levels of geopolitical uncertainty, largely shaped by the more aggressive foreign policy of President Donald Trump in his second term.
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Europe’s wealthy elite were already reassessing their US exposure in the first weeks of this year following Trump’s efforts to gain control over Greenland and intervention in Venezuela, but some family offices defied that “Sell America” sentiment with a US deal spree.
“De-dollarisation is now always a topic when we meet clients,” Benjamin Cavalli, head of strategic clients and global connectivity at the bank’s wealth-management unit, said in an interview. “Family offices are preparing not just for near-term volatility but for an extended period of inter-connected risk.”
Other investment firms for the ultra-wealth have raised bets on sectors benefiting from the fallout of tensions in the Middle East, where many family offices have flocked recently amid geopolitical shifts in regions such as the UK.
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Overall, 60% of the family offices polled said they planned to make strategic allocation changes to their portfolios this year, the highest level in UBS’ report since at least 2020. Allotments to developed markets and reductions to real estate are among popular options.
“There’s a rebalancing going on against the more uncertain investment backdrop,” Yves-Alain Sommerhalder, head of global wealth management solutions at UBS, said in the interview.
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