Goldman Sachs' Sara Naison-Tarajano - working with the apex of the wealth channel

What It Covers

Sara Naison-Tarajano, Goldman Sachs partner and global head of Apex, explains how she built a dedicated platform serving 600+ family offices globally. She covers the intersection of private and public markets, how ultra-high-net-worth families allocate capital differently, key findings from Goldman's family office survey, and why intellectual curiosity matters more than rigid career planning in finance.

Key Questions Answered

• •Family Office Asset Allocation: Goldman's survey shows family offices maintain 42% allocation to alternatives, 12% in cash, with duration shifting from 50% under three years to majority over three years. This higher alternatives exposure compared to typical wealth clients reflects their ability to tolerate illiquidity while keeping cash reserves for capital commitments and opportunistic buying during market dislocations.
• •Secondaries Market Growth: Secondary investments emerge as the dominant trend across all regions, offering family offices the ability to invest in mature companies at discounts to NAV, avoid j-curve effects, and gain full transparency into assets. This strategy consistently delivers approximately 15% returns while mitigating downside risk compared to blind pool commitments in high-valuation environments.
• •Private Markets Outperformance: Average performing buyout funds outperform MSCI World by 5% over twenty years, while top quartile performance significantly exceeds this. Private credit shows 3% outperformance over traditional high yield in the last decade. However, taxable investors must calculate after-tax returns net of fees, as pretax returns are irrelevant for individual wealth management decisions.
• •Beating Inflation Framework: Wealth management reduces to one core principle: portfolios must beat inflation post-spending and taxes to preserve purchasing power across generations. This requires staying invested rather than holding excess cash, understanding required annual spending plus inflation adjustments, and maintaining disciplined asset allocation across public equities, fixed income, and alternatives regardless of market volatility.
• •Geographic Diversification Trends: Asia family offices hold 19% in cash, down from 25% in the prior survey, reflecting greater proximity to geopolitical conflicts and newer wealth requiring strategic deployment. Families use three primary hedging strategies: geographic diversification, tactical gold positions, and treasury allocations, while opportunistically hedging equity exposure during low volatility and high valuation periods.
• •NextGen Engagement Strategy: Successful families demonstrate transparency by bringing children under the tent early, focusing on financial literacy education delivered by third parties rather than parents. The next generation shows longer time horizons, investing in emerging themes like women's sports, nuclear energy, and solar power, while feeling pressure to protect first-generation capital through deep education and understanding.