Here is the transcript:

Graham Rowan: Thank you very much, Emanuel. There it is. Hold on.

As you can see, what little hair I have left has gone completely grey, so there’s obviously plenty keeping me awake at night already. But I was – as you say – we’ve got 1300 members. We’ve got people all the way from Britain to Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia. I talk to these people every day. So, I wanted to give you in this final session a sort of distillation of the key things that they’re telling me are keeping them awake.

I do need to start with a government health warning. I was not a great loss to the diplomatic service. And I do have a reputation for telling it like it is. So, I’m not sparing any county or any individual in my comments. These are real concerns from real people. Please, do not shoot the messenger.

I think it’s really ironic that 99 percent of the people out there think that if only they had more money all their problems would be solved. That’s why they buy lottery tickets. That’s why they invest in cryptocurrencies, to get rich quick. They just think money is gonna solve them. Then the 1 percent, perhaps represented by the people in here, know that having money is good; it solves certain things. But what it does it gives you a whole new set of problems. And that’s one of the things that my family members have to try and deal with. I’ve gone through hundreds of conversations in my head to come up with about five categories of concerns that are keeping my net worth investors awake at night.

You can’t escape government, politics. How the country is run is a key part of what impacts them. Most of them are business owners. Let’s face it. Most wealth is created through business. Really hard to become seriously wealthy. Most of the people in my organization own their own business.

They’re also very concerned about family. I’ve got a few things to say about the next generation. Believe me, professor, you’re not alone in this in China. It happens in the West, as well.

Increasingly, there are concerns about the planet. It’s all very well sorting things out financially, but what sort of planet are you gonna leave to your children? How are they gonna survive if we kill the planet off ourselves?

And then there’s the whole thing about legacies. It’s got really fashionable in recent years. I guess if you’re worried about where the next meal is coming from you’re not so concerned about your legacy. Once you get to a certain level of wealth there is this desire to try to leave something behind. So, legacy comes important.

Let’s look at some of the concerns that people have.

We’re brought up to think that the two things that are inevitable in life are death and taxes. I wanna challenge that, actually, because in the 20^th century we pretty much doubled life expectancy, from around 40 to around 80 years. There’s every reason to expect we could double it again this century. There’s a biotech billionaire called Jim Mellon who recently published a book called Juvenescence. It was all about how we’re all gonna live to be somewhere between 120 and 150 years old. Soon, when I go to my doctor for a routine checkup, he’ll say something like “Mr. Rowan, you’ve been hitting the red wine a bit hard again. Liver loss you’re here.” we’re gonna have – there are thoughts going around like most people will identify issues before we even feel any symptoms and they’ll be able to be fixed. When you start putting these technologies together it’s quite feasible to think that we’ll all live to 120 years old.

If we live that long think how much more tax we could pay! Isn’t that wonderful! Politicians cannot wait for this.

Tax in this country, I don’t know what it’s like where you’re from, but tax in this country is not a happy story. I think we’re increasingly going to see some kind of tax on wealth and assets. A lot of it up to now has been focused on income, but they’re taxing income as much as they can already. What can we then next and assets. Watch out for the property-related taxes. There’s a lot of talk here now about a land value tax. They seem to have been talking about it for a hundred years.

Now, inheritance tax. If you do not plan your affairs properly, certainly in this country, the government will relieve your heirs of 40 percent of your estate. This used to be called death duties. It only used to affect the aristocracy. Now, if you own a family home in southeast England you’ll be paying inheritance tax, so you’ve really gotta plan things carefully. Certainly, anyone who’s accumulated wealth is worried about inheritance tax.

The next one for me is the most pernicious of all. This is – I don’t know – it’s so anti-democratic. I’ve started a little campaign about this. My MP is actually the Chancellor of the Exchequer for ... I’ve written to him about this. He’s not forwarded a reply yet. What they’ve done recently is they’ve made something that was legal 20 years ago illegal retrospectively. I won’t go into details. But I have members who have been presented with tax bills for between 100 and 200,000 pounds, payable immediately, relating to things that happened over the last 20 years. How do you be a good citizen if something you think you’re told is legal today can suddenly be illegal in 20 years’ time? No one can live like that but that’s one of the things that’s happening here.

There’s also been a load of legislation against private landlords, from a supposedly conservative government. A thing called Section 24 has made buy-to-let investment go from the best investment to one of the worst you could make. There are a lot of tax changes on the outlook. If you’re on overseas investor without a single…which is a tax on envelope, very expensive to buy UK property now. All kinds of new taxes being dreamed up all the time.

What it leaves me and my members feeling is disenfranchised. Who do we vote for? If there was an election tomorrow who’s looking after our interests? We are in the 1 percent and not the 99 percent, and by the way to put a figure on it, to be in the 1 percent in this country you need a net worth of 3.2 million pounds. That’s the figure that gets you into that top percent. That does not make you the most popular person in the country. So, there’s nobody acting for us or – I don’t know who to vote for. I really don’t.

We’re also supposed to have a government that’s pro-business. This is our ex-foreign secretary, very much like to be our next prime minister, also the ex-mayor of London. I realize a lot of people you know who used to work for the mayor of London,he said, not me. He … something about the basic attitude of the government towards business, which again is so wrong-headed. We are the wealth creators. We are the only small and medium-sized businesses, the only driver of growth left in the economy. If you squash that with taxes and business rates and higher and higher minimum wages you’ve got nothing left to grow the economy. So, I’m worried and my members are worried about that kind of attitude to business at the heart of government.

The problem is nobody’s going to go out rioting on the streets to protect our interests. No. I would like to have cars burning in the – the French. I spend a lot of time in France. The slightest thing in France there’ll be cars burning in the streets, protests, strikes, and everything else. I guarantee it. Here, for the kinds of things that we’re worried about no one else is going to worry about at all.

We’re also getting a bit worried about the state power, the power the state’s taken on for itself. Particularly, for example, since 9-11, which obviously was a terrible tragedy, but if you look at what’s in the Patriot Act and follow that up, absolutely catastrophic. And we have just recently been taken over as the most watched nation on earth by China. Thank you. We are all – the biggest blockbuster on television in Britain this year was a series about a home secretary that wanted to monitor every phone call, every mouse click, and every email of every citizen in the country in the interests of national security, obviously. That kind of surveillance society is just not what ... In China, now, they have this social credit system, where if you were a bad citizen, if you don’t pay your council tax or whatnot, you have your image put on a big screen in the center of the city and you have travel restrictions placed on you. That’s not the sort of thing…

We celebrate the memory, I should say, a hundred years since the end of the Great War, and a lot of our great grandfathers fought and died in that war. People are worried that the state is getting too powerful.

And there’s also this sense of intolerance. Donald Trump wants to build a wall on the Mexican border. He wants to stop immigration. He wants to stop the birth rights and so on. I’m no, but I seem to recall that it was millions of young, ambitious, energetic people coming to America to start a new life that actually made America great in the first place. He wants to keep them all out and make America great again. And in this country, of course, we’ve got the prospect of ... I grew up with a business associate who’s Jewish, born and bred in this country, very successful guy. He just took a trip to Tel Aviv to look at buying a property out there because he wants a plan B, in case this guy ends up in another country. These are not healthy signs in a democracy. There are things going on in government that really are perturbing to my members and investors.

Bringing it a bit closer to home, what about business? We are going through such a massive change in the world economy. Just in my lifetime, my grandparents worked in shipyards in the northeast of England. There were coal mines. There were factories, all very capital intensive, labor intensive work. That sort of thing has been replaced by the digital economy. I think we’re still seeing – there are some great examples of it today – how digital technology is changing the world. Now, the question for a lot of my members is is my business gonna keep with that change? Am I on the right side of that curve? Am I developing and owning intellectual property that’s gonna give me some real growth opportunities? Am I on the right side of this biggest ever change, certainly, since the industrial revolution?

The truth of it is I ... Our most popular investment this year has been a bond that’s driven by algorithmsin the foreign exchange market. It looks for pricing differences between, let’s say, the pound versus the pound following in New York. If there’s a little bit difference to the fifth decimal point it does a buy and a sell and makes some money on that transaction. That’s producing 18, 20 percent returns around it. But those used to be… Now it’s all being done by computer coding.

Even more bizarre, did you see the results of the auction in New York a couple of weeks ago? A painting done by a computer algorithm sold for $400,000.00; the same as an original Picasso at the same auction. Go figure that! A computer gen… Now they teach your children, teach them coding. That’s the thing. That is the skill to have in today’s world.

Talking of children, I am not a parent, which puts me in a perfect position to judge everyone else’s parenting skills. I’m here to tell you you’ve done a terrible job. We have this bunch of snowflake millennials who are – from the moment they came out of the womb, it’s like “Oh, you’re so amazing! You’re so perfect! You’re brilliant.” Life’s about taking part and competing and all this sort of thing. Have you ever employed one of these people? You can’t criticize them. And it’s a bit like you. You talk about the second generation stuff. Simon Sinek wrote a book called Start With Why; that’s the new author. I saw an interview recently and he said this generation is the result of failed parenting strategies, and his conclusion was the only people who can sort it out are business owners and employers who have to turn them into useful members of society. Thanks very much, Simon. It’s all our problem, unpaid and unsupported. We’ve got that kind of a concern, as well. What do we do with these millennial kids?

I don’t know if you’ve heard the three generation story? There’s quite a well-trodden path where the first generation – China would be a great example of this – has come from perhaps modest beginnings, worked through the… built up a business, achieved some success. Their children have seen how hard they worked and they take it up to the next level and achieve major success. But then their children, the third generation, are born with a silver spoon in their mouths, everything’s done for them (actually sound like millennials), and if they’re gonna work hard they can’t be bothered, it’s all too difficult, and they just spend the money. Before we know it, they’re back in again. This is one of the risks that – multi-generational family businesses have a real challenge.

Talking of which, there are in this country half a million baby-boomer owned business for sale. In America there are two million baby-boomer-owned businesses for sale. These are people born just after the war between 1946 and 1964. The earliest ones are in their 70s now. They want to retire. But the next generation doesn’t want to know. I’ve seen people closing the doors of perfectly good businesses because their children won’t take them on. And even if you go on average they sell 8 percent of the businesses on their books a year. So, 92 percent of those baby boomers are trapped in the business, unable to retire because they can’t sell it and their children won’t take it on.

And also, obviously now, increasingly there’s a concern about the fact – and let’s be honest. The truth is just like all the protocols and all the meanings of the treaties very little substantial progress is being made. It’s probably the biggest issue that’s gobbling under. The fundamental problem, and I think we’ve touched on it a little bit today with philanthropy, is that you’ve got politicians locked in for four or five-year election cycles and you’ve got issues that need 40 or 50-year solutions. My feeling is that solving those kinds of environmental problems is unlikely to come through the political process.

And finally, they’re worried about their legacy. In a sense, it’s never been easier to leave a legacy. We’ve got 10 million millionaires on the planet. If you look back at it from the first thought this morning, yes, there was the Joseph Rowntrees; there was the – the guy in America who built all the libraries, the billionaire guy. Andrew Carnegie! There were a handful of those billionaires around then. Now, there are loads of them. It’s never been easier to leave a legacy, never been easier to set up the right structures to make sure that they’re not just doing what you want them to do, but you have to make sure they’re very tax efficient, as well, so you don’t give half the money to the government.

Those are all the issues. But I’m not ... I’m a classic R4 kind of a guy. I don’t wanna lead you into the problems. I want to give you solutions. Give me a drumroll. Do you hear a drumroll? No, I can’t hear a drumroll, really. Don’t worry about it. No budget in anything. The answer is becoming a global citizen, what I call meta-diversity, more even than we saw from the Swiss deal. This is real diversification, beyond the Nestle.

What do I mean by that? Let me give you a few examples.

To me, a global citizen owns assets in more than one country. I don’t just mean they have a fund in Britain. They literally own assets in multiple places. They own businesses in multiple countries. They own more than one place of residency or citizenship. Really important … Perhaps a multisense of lifestyle and I think they tend to tackle their philanthropy on this bigger or global level. Let’s just have a look at what I mean by being a global citizen.

One of the things I love to look at because I’m trying to help my members to achieve multi-generational wealth, so I look at families that have achieved it and how they did it. A great example is the Colonna family in Roma. They’ve been for 900 years. One of their scions was asked recently, “What’s the trick? What’s the secret? What’s the secret source?” She said, “It’s the rule of thirds. We have one third of our wealth in gold, one third in fine art, one third in land and property.” If you know anything about Italian history, you’ll know it’s been a little bit mixed, shall we say. One of the great benefits of gold and fine arts is it’s very portable. As suitcase full of gold, a suitcase – your masters in one and your gold in the other, you’re can get quite a few million pounds worth out of the country quickly. That’s how they’ve done it.

Obviously, we have a much more structured approach in our wealth pyramid, with different assets, different levels of doing a different job for , but these are what I call some of the bedrock assets. They’re gonna maintain their value across the centuries. An ounce of gold would buy you a Roman toga 2,000 years ago. It’ll buy you a Savile Row suit today. I don’t care what Warren Buffett says about gold. There’s no such share in the stock market been around for 2,000 years, nor will any be any of them be around in 2,000 years.

Business diversification. A lot of the problems we’ve got now, slow growth; the developed countries are closing up. There’s not really much room left. If you wanna grow a business or your children’s … to grow a serious business they’ve gotta look to some of the fronteering properties that are now in that rapid growth phase. Countries like Vietnam. Closer to home there’s Estonia or Georgia. There’s lots of room for growth there. They’re business friendly. There’s less competition. A new era.

My office is in Richmond on Thames. Every few weeks someone decides it would be a great idea to open another coffee shop in Richmond on Thames. There are 187 coffee shops in Richmond on Thames. You can predict how long they’ll last. But if you open a coffee shop in Laos or Vietnam the chances are there won’t be much competition and you might actually have a chance of succeeding.

I met a 24-year-old a few weeks old. He turned up at this conference driving his Lochlaren ... And I said, “What do you do?” He said, “I buy computer games in this country and I sell them in places like Australia. And I’m making 5 million a year.” Twenty-four years of age, computer games. I felt like a real underachiever.

This is key, as well. If you want be a global citizen, your business needs to be location independent. If it’s a factory or a mine, that’s kinda difficult. If it’s a digital business, obviously, it’s a lot easier.

Here’s what is for me actually key, now. Governments are coming down in all sorts of ways. If you only have one residency, you are at the mercy of that government. If you have more than one passport you can be a lot more flexible. There are all sorts of schemes, now, for residency, starting from as little as 50,000. I’m currently applying for residency in Montenegro, Eastern Europe. It’s on a lovely – port on the Adriatic, same climate as the Cote d’Azur in France. It’s got a tax rate of 9 percent and it’s very business friendly. I’m also looking into potentially acquiring polity in the Bahamas, which also brings a residency option with it. More than one place to go is increasingly ...

Lifestyle diversification is now possible and with cheap air travel and all the rest of it, to live in more than one place. I split my time between an island on the Thames, at a place called Weybridge, and Antibes in the south of France, on the Cote d’Azur, which is where I’ll actually be on Saturday. And I’ve also got a place in Cape Verde and Paris. Perhaps Montenegro will be next. So, you can either just look for the sun or choose one place for business, one for lifestyle, one for tax. And look here; just raise your eyes a bit. Some of the best hospitals in the world are not in Britain or Europe. They’re in Asia. And some of the best healthcare in the world is in Kuala Lumpur, in the millennium. I know that people think, “National Health Service is the best.” No, it ain’t.

And then global philanthropy. My cause is trying to win financial literacy. I see it in so many levels of society, not just the less well off. I see lawyers and doctors who are earning hundreds of thousands and spending hundreds of thousands and achieving virtually zero or any net worth. A lot of people don’t know how to manage money or invest all their money. That’s my cause and I try to what I can for that.

What’s your cause? What’s the thing that’s closest to your heart? Then find a foundation that’s already doing it – if you wanna take onboard the fight about fragmentation. Or if there isn’t one that’s doing any … you may have to set something up.

But here’s the key thing. You’ve got the network and resources and the backing to make stuff happen. If you look at things like the Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation and what they’ve achieved. An entrepreneurial who actually can get some decent funding, it goes straight to where it’s needed and you change the health of a whole continent. That’s what I think it needs: us, our kind of people to solve some of these global environmental issues that the politicians won’t do. I’ll just make sure you’re ...

So, the dot’s in the air, the end of the final session, congratulations on that. In summary, being a high net worth investor does not insulate you from the problems and the changes that are going on in the world. It just gives you a new and a bigger set of issues. The answer, I think, is that you’ve got to start raising your thinking to a supra-national level, to a global level, both in terms of your own circumstances (where you’re living, where your business is, where your finances and investments are) but also in terms of your philanthropy. It’s only really by thinking bigger, longer term than politicians are thinking, that we can address these problems. I hope today will be a catalyst for everyone in the room and all the people you know in your network, raising your thinking and tackling these issues to a higher level.

Thanks for the opportunity to speak and thank you for listening.

Male Speaker 2: We want to reward you, not with a bottle of wine, but with a box of the premium tea.

Female Speaker: Thank you very much.

Male Speaker 2: I think that was an appropriate end to today’s sessions. A lot of different sessions that we had today could easily be projected on to even more sessions that we could have had a very great two-day conference, if we wanted to. The purpose of the conference is to mobilize activity; that is, to mobilize all of us to go back and build on the infrastructures that we’re building in philanthropy and covered social responsibility. We didn’t get to talk very much about the environment. We didn’t get to talk very much about the areas of education and so on. There are a lot of areas that could have been built on.

But let’s not forget the purpose of today’s program and that is to turn the entire dialogue about wealth back on society and then use that to reconstruct…