Senior Citi executive on why the ultrawealthy want to diversify away from America
Wealthy American families are increasingly seeking to reserve assets outside the United States; The shift is so dramatic that one of Citi’s senior asset managers says he’s never seen anything like it in his career.
“This is the first time in my career that I have heard of US clients wanting to book their assets outside the US.” Darlene PattersonCiti Wealth Global Head of Client Solutions said: Luck in a recent interview. Patterson, who leads a team specifically created to address clients’ cross-border needs holistically across Citi’s lines of business and geographies, distinguished the move from outright deportation and pushed back on actor-like narratives around it. George Clooney’s French citizenship – that framed wealthy Americans as: leave the country completely. “In my opinion, I wouldn’t call it a complete departure from the United States,” he said, adding that customers “are not necessarily deported from the United States either.”
Instead, he described the pursuit of “optionality”: wealthy Americans obtaining additional residency or golden visas in Italy, Portugal, Jersey in the Channel Islands, Australia and New Zealand. “They’re just looking for more lifestyle improvements and options,” Patterson said, noting that customers are “somewhat concerned about the policy risk in this country.” He said this was an important factor that could not be underestimated: the desire for a “stable, coherent political environment”.
Patterson’s perspective is shaped by his own life across borders. Born and raised in Beijing, he spent the early part of his private banking career in Hong Kong before eventually settling in the US and joining Citi about five years ago. He watched Hong Kong transform from a regional hub into a truly global hub and said: Luck The city appears to be engaged in “some regional local competition”, almost rivaling Singapore for capital, and increasingly this competition is coming not only from China and Canada (the legacy of the 1997 devolution migration) but also from Latin America and the Middle East. This perspective, he suggested, is part of why the current shift in America is so new to him: Citi also maintains an internal “corridor monitor” that tracks live client data on where money is moving, giving its team real-time visibility into wealth flows beyond published industry research.
Patterson isn’t alone in his field describing this as an unprecedented event. Nuri Katz of Apex Capital Partners is an immigration consultant who has spent decades relocating the world’s ultra-rich, including helping wealthy Chinese families move to Canada earlier. said Luck few weeks ago Americans are its biggest growing market. “I’ve never seen this before,” he said, echoing Patterson.
$3 trillion global realignment
Patterson’s comments accompanied Citi Wealth’s latest statement Wealth Beyond Borders The report frames geography (not just asset allocation) as an emerging element of portfolio diversification. Citing BCG’s Global Wealth Report 2025, the report predicts that a cumulative $3.06 trillion will be transferred to five leading financial centers (Hong Kong, Singapore, Switzerland, UAE and the US) between 2025 and 2029. (Asia is a major player; Hong Kong and Singapore alone appear to capture more than half of these flows.)
The report identifies three drivers behind this activity: improving family lifestyles, sustaining business and portfolio growth, and improving the resilience of wealth to policy or sovereign risk.
This drive for flexibility resonates directly with Patterson’s statements about the policy concerns of his American clients, with the report explicitly warning that “tax regimes could suddenly shift in adverse directions” and that “in an extreme scenario, full or partial state confiscation could be a factor in environments where the rule of law is weaker”; It underscores why predictable, property-rights-respecting jurisdictions are becoming more attractive, even to Americans. Separately, UBS Global Family Office report found just a few months ago He said wealthy families are planning to shift their portfolios from the United States, citing fears of an AI bubble, tariffs, a weakening dollar and volatile economic policy.
This shift has been ongoing since the pandemic, with questions from wealthy Americans about golden visas and citizenship-by-investment programs. increased by more than 500% in five years By 2024, Greece, Italy, Malta, Portugal and Spain will be priority destinations; It’s pretty much the same list of countries Patterson still talks about. A transition advisor said: Luck Back then, wealthy Americans were “hedging their bets.”
More recently, Henley & Partners’ 2026 Wealth Transition Report We found that wealthy Americans are now among the most active people globally in seeking residence or citizenship abroad. In particular, the firm found that many people “keep their wealth in their home country” even when gaining a foreign foothold; This is a nuance that also supports Patterson’s findings; It’s about optionality, not complete separation.
This trend isn’t limited to Citi’s client book. CNBC 60% of family offices surveyed in May 2026 UBS They planned to make strategic changes to asset allocation next year — roughly double the level of the previous five years and the highest level recorded by UBS — with most of them reducing their exposure to the U.S. dollar amid fears of an AI bubble, tariffs, a weakening dollar and unstable economic policy called “dedollarization trade.” About 30% said they had cut or were considering reducing their dollar holdings. Interestingly, the pullback was concentrated outside the US: American family offices increased their home country allocations from 86% to 88%; This reinforced Patterson’s view that this was diversification rather than flight, an industry-wide phenomenon rather than the product of a single bank’s customer base.
New wealth wants global visibility
Patterson’s observations were reinforced by a separate interview with him. Richard WeintraubIt operates Citi’s family office business in North America and Latin America, comprising approximately 2,000 family offices worldwide with an average net worth exceeding $2 billion. Weintraub noted that newly created U.S. wealth naturally increasingly demands international booking options. “What we’re seeing across the board is the ability of these very wealthy individuals to invest beyond their borders. To use large institutions like ours to help them find opportunities in other regions, frankly, developed or developing.”
As Patterson describes it, “all these new billionaires are asking: ‘Hey Citi, you’re global. Can I get my assets booked in, say, Switzerland? Can I open an account in Singapore? Those are the next generation questions we’re seeing.”
Weintraub also identified a broader trend by family offices toward illiquidity and diversification across country borders: Citi’s annual survey of 346 family offices found that 70% of them now engage in direct private investments, and 40% said they increased that activity in the past year.
not random but intentional
Patterson emphasized that this movement of wealth was intentional rather than accidental. “What we’re seeing across the customer base is very intentional,” he said, comparing it to older “offshore trust, set it up, forget it” approaches, saying it’s “really very much a holdover from the old days.” The Citi report similarly emphasizes that strategic asset positioning is “not merely a defensive measure,” but “a proactive strategy to increase wealth resilience” that requires ongoing coordination across jurisdictions rather than a one-off move.
Still, both executives confirmed that America’s fundamental appeal remains. Geopolitically sensitive regions continue to shift capital to the United States “because of our rule of law and our well-established and very vibrant capital markets,” Patterson said, pointing to renewed interest from Middle Eastern families in the wake of the Iran conflict. The Citi report backs this up: The US holds roughly a third of global liquid investable wealth and is home to 37% of the world’s millionaires.
. In other words, the dynamic is not the flight of American capital; the refusal of the ultra-rich at home and abroad to keep all their eggs in one jurisdictional basket.
