Lee Hye-jung, chief executive of Autrice Group, has spent 25 years in real estate and asset management, working alongside wealthy individuals and family businesses around the world as they built, managed and handed down their holdings. Along the way, she found that the affluent share a secret of their own: lasting wealth comes not from techniques for accumulating money but from passing on intact the values and philosophy behind it.
Her new book, "The Humanities of Wealth," departs from conventional guides to real estate and finance investing, focusing instead on what families must prepare to preserve wealth and carry it into the next generation. The author divides assets into four domains — spiritual, human, social and financial — and argues that sustainable wealth emerges when the four are in balance. She links standards for living and time management, individual capability and reputation, the relationships and trust built within a family and society, and cash flow and investment structures into a single asset management framework.
The book also examines practical issues that shape the future of a family and its business, including the establishment and operation of family corporations, governance and dividends, family charters and succession plans. It identifies six crises that Korean family corporations repeatedly encounter, along with approaches to designing around them. While exploring the potential of artificial intelligence in managing assets and buildings, it also spells out the investment principles people must uphold and the limits of automated decision-making.
The book introduces a broad range of asset management and succession cases from Singapore, the United States, Europe, China and the Middle East. Through the ways each region's institutions and culture shape the preservation and transfer of assets, and through the legal, tax and governance questions that arise in managing assets abroad, it maps the currents of global wealth management. First Books, 288 pages.
