Whether they stay as family offices, or convert back again, will partly depend on specific circumstances. It may be that this trend, triggered in the immediate aftermath of the Dodd-Frank legislation, has run its course. But some firms will continue to make the shift to family office status if it simplifies their regulatory lives. 

Under the rules, organizations managing outsiders’ money had to register with the SEC for the first time, with all the reporting and associated burdens that involves.

Here is a list of organizations that have converted to family offices. This list is not exhaustive so if readers have examples they want to add, please email the editor at tom.burroughes@wealthbriefing.com

Soros Fund Management, headed by hedge fund star George Soros, stopped managing funds for outside investors and become a family office.

Randall Yuen, founder of Jafra Capital Management, told investors that the firm was shutting hedge funds at the end of September 2018. The business was set up only about two years previously.

Henry Swieca, a co-founder of Highbridge Capital Management, returned money to outside investors in his hedge fund, Talpion Fund Management.

A New York-based multi-strategy hedge fund firm, Brencourt Advisors, returned outside capital to investors and re-invented itself as a family office.

Weintraub Capital Management, a $1 billion San Francisco-based long-short equity hedge fund, handed back money to investors and became a family office overseeing the wealth of founder Jerry Weintraub.

Embattled hedge fund manager Steven A Cohen changed the name of his US-based SAC Capital Advisors to a family office structure called Point72 Asset Management.

Kamunting Street Capital returned capital of non-family members to investors and converted to a family office. That business is also known as K-Street.

Other conversions included TigerShark management and Loeb King Management.