An independent house working alongside leading families, principals, and the institutions that serve them, connecting the perspectives, peers, and judgement that consequential decisions require.
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A standing read on what is changing for family enterprises, and what to do about it. Circulated privately to principals, family office leadership, and senior practitioners across Europe, the Americas, the Middle East, and Asia.
Why Family Offices Should Ask What Protects the Income, Not Only What Produces It
Yield is attractive again, but the more important question is whether that yield is properly protected. This paper examines why family offices should look beyond the headline coupon and focus on documentation, covenants, valuation, manager behaviour, and workout discipline before accepting income as safety.
Read the paper →Why Families Should Optimise for Being Approximately Right, Not Perfectly Advised
Sophisticated families often have access to exceptional advice. The harder question is whether that advice is converted into judgement. This paper examines why the best family offices do not optimise for perfect certainty, but for the ability to make timely, owned decisions when the answer will never be complete.
Read the paper →Why the Case for Defence Tech Is Strong - and Why That Is Not Enough
Defence technology has moved from an uncomfortable topic to one of the most discussed investment themes in Europe. The strategic case is strong, but that is not enough. This paper examines why families and investors need a defence discipline: strategic fit, procurement, industrial capability, and ownership.
Read the paper →Why Co-Investing Costs Family Offices More Than They Think
Co-investing is marketed on the absence of fees and carry. The institutional research suggests it can outperform fund commitments in aggregate. And yet, in the hands of many family offices, the strategy quietly disappoints. This paper examines why the version of co-investing in the academic studies and the version most families actually practise are two different activities, and what separates them is knowable before any cheque is written.
Read the paper →Twelve Principles for Surviving Shocks You Cannot Predict
In December 1976, Gianni Agnelli sold a stake in Fiat to the Libyan state to keep the family in control of the company. Half a century later, the lesson endures. Drawing on the Agnellis, Toyota, the Wallenbergs, the Rockefellers, the Rothschilds, and Henkel, this paper examines the twelve principles that explain why some families compound for a century while others do not.
Read the paper →Why the Smartest Technology Investment of the Decade Is Making Family Offices More Fragile
86% of family offices are now using AI. 61% admit they do not know where to start. The gap between adoption and understanding is where the damage will occur. From deepfake fraud and autonomous cyber weapons to the quiet erosion of human judgment, this paper examines the risks that most offices are not yet asking about.
Read the paper →What Happens When the World Moves Faster Than Your Portfolio
The first quarter of 2026 delivered three simultaneous shocks: the Iran war, the tariff chaos, and a private markets liquidity crunch. Each was manageable on its own. Together, they revealed that most family office portfolios had no release valve.
Read the paper →Why Family Offices Must Professionalise Before the Next Crisis Defines Them
The growing mismatch between the sophistication of what family offices invest in and the sophistication of how they are run. An examination of the decision-making, cybersecurity, and talent gaps that leave even the most well-resourced offices vulnerable.
Read the paper →How We Work
Mirai works quietly alongside families, principals, and the institutions that serve them. There are no junior teams, no layers, and no transaction-first agenda. The work is principal-led, relationship-driven, and designed for matters where judgement, access, and discretion matter more than visibility.
Judgement
We work where ownership, capital, governance, and discretion meet. The facts matter. But in the most consequential situations, the harder question is usually who to trust, which risk to own, and when to decide.
Perspective 01
For situations requiring independence, maturity, and discretion.
Some boards, family enterprises, advisory boards, and chairman-led settings require more than technical expertise. They require judgement shaped by corporate finance, private wealth, fiduciary responsibility, and family-office experience.
Perspective 02
For decisions a family cannot fully outsource.
Succession, governance, family-office design, liquidity, reputation, and the long-term role of the family enterprise. Mirai brings external perspective without taking ownership of the family's decision.
Perspective 03
For institutions that need to understand family capital.
Family offices do not decide like institutional allocators. They weigh trust, alignment, reputation, privacy, and time horizon differently. Mirai helps institutions understand those dynamics without turning relationships into distribution.
Among Families
Most of what a leading family needs is already held by another. The lessons of a transition already navigated. The operating partner already trusted. The perspective on a region or sector already earned the hard way. The difficulty is rarely the absence of the answer. It is the absence of the room.
Mirai exists for conversations that are too sensitive, too specific, or too consequential for ordinary advisory settings. Built across Europe, the Americas, the Middle East, and Asia, the relationships behind the firm reach into leading families, the most senior family offices, chairmen and chief executives of major institutions, and the practitioners who quietly hold the field together.
We convene; we do not broker. The relationships, the decisions, and the structures belong to the families themselves.
Leadership
Ralph has worked across corporate finance, global private wealth, family-office leadership, and governance. At Deutsche Bank, he spent over fifteen years in M&A, corporate finance, and senior leadership roles across London, Frankfurt, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Tokyo, working with chairmen, chief executives, and the bank's most strategic client relationships.
At Julius Baer in Zurich, he built and led coverage of the bank's global top 100 clients and developed co-investment and impact investment platforms for large global families. He later established and led a multi-generational family office for a U.S. Fortune 500 family following a succession event.
His perspective has been shaped by institutional responsibility, fiduciary oversight, and private family dynamics. He has served as an independent director and audit committee chair of a U.S.-listed company, advised on governance questions for family offices and family enterprises, and currently serves as Senior Adviser to KingsRock. He co-founded and chairs Pensavvi, an invitation-only community of family offices, private capital leaders, senior executives, and board members.
He holds a PhD in Strategy and Finance from the University of St Gallen and was a Research Fellow at INSEAD.
Contact
Mirai works with family principals, family-office CEOs, and trusted advisers on matters where judgement, discretion, and access matter. Conversations are usually by introduction, but principals and advisers acting on their behalf are welcome to make direct contact.
London, United Kingdom