Lawrence CHAN is the Founder of the Seal of Love Charitable Foundation and his family office that also focuses on philanthropy to educate future generations about compassion and more
Many family offices are formed to preserve family wealth and ensure a smooth succession. But philanthropist Lawrence Chan, representing the second generation of a family of hoteliers that founded the Park Lane Hotel in Hong Kong and many other hotels overseas, decided to start a family office for a different reason. Chan wants to use his office to help those less fortunate than himself, and to pass on some of his personal values to younger generations.
“I want my family office to educate future generations about the concepts of compassion, kindness, and social responsibility,” he says.
Chan hails from the family of a pioneer hotelier in Hong Kong. His father, Chan Chak Fu, built a global network of hotels, including the well-known Ambassador Hotel in TST, one of the first upscale hotels in the city, and the Park Lane Hotel that still stands today in Causeway Bay. Chan Chak Fu himself was committed to philanthropy.
As the eldest son of Chan Chak Fu, Lawrence Chan is likewise a strong believer in giving back to society. He established his family office to segregate his operational hotel businesses from his charitable work and his more liquid portfolio investments. He also wanted to demonstrate some core guiding principles to his family.
Compassion and generosity
It is important that his family understands the value of being frugal upon themselves, while demonstrating compassion and generosity towards the underprivileged, Chan says, noting that as the family wealth comes from society, they are also obligated to give back to society. Chan is the former CEO of the family’s North American family business, whilst his brother runs the Asia Pacific arm.
He says his family should learn how to channel their wealth back to society in a more efficient way.
“We are focusing on two main areas,” Chan says. “We want to help relieve pain and suffering, and to help break the poverty cycle.”
Chan saw friends lose their wealth during the global financial crisis, which made him pause and rethink. He sold his highly successful businesses in the US after 30 years there, and moved back to Hong Kong for his new venture in 2010.
Chan’s charitable activities have nurtured local talent and the underprivileged in Asia. For example, his Seal of Love Charitable Foundation donated HK$40 million to HKUST students to help them solve real-world problems using innovative thinking and technology. The idea is to give the students the means to deliver social impact with tangible solutions in resource-limited communities.
Seal of Love is a hands-on organization, and representatives regularly visit nations such as Cambodia to help build village schools and improve the living situation of those less fortunate through education. They also support organizations which are dedicated to helping others to break the poverty cycle. As an active businessman in the past, Chan looks for efficiency in his charitable activities, including how resources are used, how impacts are measured, and more importantly, how these impacts can be augmented.
“My daughter Dee Dee loves to say that we shouldn’t just give someone a fish, we should teach them how to fish. And even that’s not enough, we need to take it a step further. After we teach them to fish, we need to teach them how to sell fish and chips,” he says.
“We show them how to market their products, too. That way we can break the poverty cycle with more far-reaching impacts,” he says.
Chan started looking into establishing a family office three years ago, to bring some synchronicity under one roof to his liquid portfolio investments and his charitable activities. “The operational business is purely profit driven and it takes a very different approach,” he says.
Chan and his daughter Dee Dee focus on both the investment strategy of the family office portfolio and the direction of the charitable foundation, while staff assist with the administration and execution.
Social responsibility
Chan contributes his gains from the operational business into the family office. This centralizes his resources and enables him to execute his philanthropic values. “I could not impose these values on an active business,” he says.
“The most important function of the family office is capital preservation and social responsibility,” he adds. “The investment returns side of the office is nice, as it gives us a recurring return on our assets. But aside from having a good lifestyle, my focus now is really how we channel the investment return into meaningful social impact.”
A family office is also a good way for wealthy families to ensure governance and compliance. “Having a family office forces us to think about family values, put them in writing, and establish a framework for governance,” he adds.
The family office carries out periodic reviews of the charity work. It also clarifies the obligations of family members, provides guidelines for familial support, and codifies Chan’s guiding principles and values. The latter are in the process of being compiled in a family handbook.
In an ideal situation, it’s best to get the whole family involved, Chan says. “The most effective way to stay the course is to get the family to buy into it,” he says. “It is easier if they follow the framework willingly. You don’t want to force them to follow it,” he says.
It’s important to ensure that there are proper written guidelines to avoid misunderstandings, he says. It’s also useful to have a family leader that is respected by the other members, as this lessens the chances of in-fighting and political wrangling.
This also applies to the family’s philanthropic pursuits, he says. “Although we share an objective, there may be disagreements about how things are carried out,” he says. “If you have a family member that the rest look up to, it will make everything easier,” he explains. Chan also suggests bringing in independent advisors.
Chan says there is no one-size-fits-all plan for a family office. “If you have seen one family office, you have just seen one family office,” he says. “Each one is very different.”
“I want my family office to educate future generations about compassion, kindness, and social responsibility”
Lawrence Chan
Seal of Love
The Seal of Love Foundation was founded by Lawrence Chan in 2010. Its name originates from the idea that love and compassion have no geographic or ethnic boundary. For more than a decade the Foundation has devoted its efforts to serving the underprivileged in China, Southeast Asia and Hong Kong, building schools and sponsoring students to earn vocational and university degrees in Cambodia, supporting a Chinese medicine mobile clinic for the elderly in Hong Kong, among other meaningful causes.
陳文耀是正愛慈善基金會創辦人，他的家族辦公室亦專注慈善事業，積極向下一代灌輸憐憫和其他正面價值