00:00I've been coming to Hong Kong for 35 years.
00:04Bloomberg opened its first office here 30 years,
00:07and I've been working with Mike Bloomberg on his business, on his politics,
00:11and on his philanthropy for 29 years.
00:13I will say one of the things that Mike Bloomberg has taught me is to always think big.
00:18It's tougher to think bigger than Mike Bloomberg, I find.
00:21I often think that, and then I sit on stage and someone asks Prince Max,
00:26well, what's the thing that you're most proud of your family owning?
00:30And he says, well, you know, we own a small country in Europe.
00:33And I think to myself, maybe even Mike Bloomberg isn't thinking big enough.
00:38It is true that Mike Bloomberg did run for president.
00:41Now I think that's a mistake.
00:42We clearly should have taken it over in an M&A deal
00:45and probably would have had greater success.
00:47And so I can learn something from Prince Max.
00:52Let me actually sort of say what I think is actually the most important thing
00:55that any of you can think about.
00:57And that's essentially AI.
01:00I think about politics a lot.
01:03I worked for a great company called Bloomberg LP
01:05until Mike Bloomberg came into the office one day
01:07and said he was going to run for mayor
01:08and said, congratulations, you're now a campaign manager.
01:12We won our first campaign.
01:14At the end of that campaign, I was fired from my great corporate job
01:17and rehired for half the pay in New York City and told congratulations.
01:21And I think about politics a lot.
01:23But politics can be hedged.
01:25And even the terrible things that are going on around the world now
01:28can fundamentally be hedged and we can recover from them.
01:32I was asked at a gathering the other day,
01:36what do I worry most about?
01:37And I think people like to think it's something that's happening in the Gulf.
01:41Some people might actually suggest our current president or other issues.
01:45The thing that I worry about the most is AI.
01:49It is the thing that will be the most disruptive force in any of our lifetimes.
01:54And I don't mean technology over the last 30 years.
01:57I mean the technology over the next three years in terms of what it's going to do.
02:01It is not something you can hedge against.
02:04It's only something that you can race to adopt and prepare and to use.
02:10We are at a moment now that I honestly don't think I've seen any comparison to at any point in
02:16my life
02:16or quite frankly in the lives of my parents or my grandparents.
02:23With that in mind, there is an expression that says never waste a crisis.
02:29And I do think in a sense it is a crisis in terms of adoption and learning.
02:34But one that really does level the playing field for all of us and an incredible opportunity.
02:40And one that I think anyone that is involved in a family office
02:43or any other enterprise should think about today.
02:46When I talk to my staff, I say, and I said I guess at the beginning of last year,
02:52hey, everyone should think of this as freshman year at university.
02:56Right?
02:56We are all back in school.
02:58I'm going to get you the sophomore year.
03:01I'm going to get you the help.
03:02I'm going to get you the learning.
03:03I'm going to give you the tools.
03:05After that, you're going to have to work pretty hard on your own to get to what we call junior
03:09year, third year.
03:11But we're all back in school.
03:15The good news is I actually think this is a really exciting time for small enterprises
03:20and, in particular, family offices.
03:24Not just about efficiency, but it's changing how we ask investment questions,
03:29how information is connected, and how quickly conviction can be formed.
03:34That's why I want to briefly show you something that we're working on
03:37that is available to every person in this room
03:39and that we're launching in Hong Kong publicly, essentially, for the first time today in front of this room.
03:48Imagine you're the CIO of a family office here in Hong Kong.
03:51It may not be hard for some of you to actually imagine.
03:55And you're thinking about portfolio resilience, inflation protection, and diversification.
04:01You're conscious of Hong Kong's ambition to become international gold trading,
04:05settlements and derivative hubs, along with recent budget measures
04:08that bring precious metals and digital assets into scope for family office tax concessions.
04:16What you're seeing here is what we call Ask B,
04:19Bloomberg's new conversational AI interface for the Bloomberg terminal.
04:24Instead of navigating dozens of functions, quite frankly, hundreds or even thousands of functions,
04:31you can now ask a complex, multi-part question in natural language.
04:36For example, asking it to summarize the relevant budget highlights,
04:41map out Hong Kong's emerging gold infrastructure,
04:44and put even today's discussions into market context
04:48by looking at long-term gold price trends.
04:52Behind the scenes, Ask B coordinates multiple AI agents working in parallel
04:57across Bloomberg's trusted data, news, research, analytics.
05:01When analysis is involved, it provides the underlying data and the models
05:07so that you can take that work into your own workflow.
05:10It's also the ability to visualize data into charts clearly.
05:15And importantly, the response is pulled together with transparent sourcing,
05:20so if you want to dive deeper into a report, you're only one click away.
05:25For family offices, this isn't about outsourcing judgment.
05:29It's about accelerating insight, making institutional-grade analysis more accessible and repeatable.
05:37Well, Ask B is currently in data,
05:40and we are rolling it out to clients and regions around the world in phases.
05:46I am, as I said, very excited to share that the Bloomberg terminal users
05:51from family offices in Hong Kong will have access to Ask B starting today,
05:56giving your team's powerful new analytic capabilities to navigate today's fraught landscape.
06:04Our hope is that family offices based in Hong Kong
06:08have a new tool in their quest to grow and thrive in the city that I've come to love.
06:14About two years, Chris referred to this when Mike and I met with Christopher Hoy in New York,
06:19we talked about what would truly differentiate Hong Kong as a family office hub in the long run.
06:26Incentives matter, but capability matters more.
06:31Mike also has a saying that capital follows culture, not the other way around.
06:37I heard Mike Bloomberg say that 29 years ago,
06:41and every year of my experience has proven that that statement is correct.
06:47That conversation is what led to the Hong Kong family office nexus,
06:53focused on community, sharing practical knowledge,
06:56and giving family offices access to data technology
06:59that helped them operate with confidence in Hong Kong.
07:04What today reinforces this for me is that institutionalization is not a destination, it's a journey.
07:11And data and technology and AI are becoming the building blocks
07:15that make that journey faster, more transparent, and more resilient
07:19here in Hong Kong and everywhere around the world.
07:22I want to express enormous thanks to our speakers today.
07:26I want to thank our partners in the Hong Kong government
07:29for their incredible partnership and understanding and work that they put into this.
07:35And I want to thank every single person here for coming.
07:39Bing Lee sitting in the front row, by the way,
07:41if anyone wants to ask about Ask B, they can ask him afterwards.
07:46I do think that this event has gotten better year on year,
07:48and I expect it even better next year, and I expect to be back.
07:51So thank you again for coming.
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