FAMILY offices that have bought gold are increasingly turning their attention to gold mining shares.
“We’re seeing a lot more family offices coming in as investors, potential investors in gold equities,” said Peter Marrone, chairman and CEO of Allied Gold.
He was speaking during a panel discussion at the Financial Times Metals & Mining Summit and Precious Metals Symposium 2026 in London.
Marrone said these investors were typically moving into gold first before turning their attention to mining companies.
“They're first investing in gold, and then as they get [a] look-see to what that investment is like, then [they] come back to the equities,” he said.
“A hundred thousand ounces of production can become 150,000 ounces. A $2,000 all-in sustaining cost can become $1,000,” Marrone said, adding that these factors could create a “very significant, robust multiplier effect” in a rising gold market.
Gold mining shares have already performed strongly over the past year, benefiting from higher gold prices and improved margins across the sector.
Family offices were now “starting to dabble into the gold equities”, which he regarded as a positive sign for both gold and mining shares.
Gold exposure
The trend was also evident in the broader gold investment market. Suki Cooper, global head of commodities research at Standard Chartered, said family offices had become increasingly visible among holders of gold exchange-traded funds.
The interest was not confined to one region. Cooper said family-office participation was emerging globally, while ETF holdings were also growing in markets including India and China.
“The biggest shift has come from family offices, and … this is something we're seeing on a global basis,” she said.
The move towards gold comes as some wealthy investors reassess the traditional role of government bonds in portfolios.
John Reade, senior market strategist for Europe and Asia at the World Gold Council, said family offices were beginning to reconsider the role government debt played in preserving wealth over generations.
He said the traditional diversification benefit of bonds had diminished as bonds and equities became more closely correlated. Gold, by contrast, remained a useful diversifier of equity risk.
Institutions underweight
A second panel at the summit suggested family offices could be ahead of a much larger pool of institutional capital that remains lightly exposed to gold.
Shayne McGuire of the Texas Teachers Pension Fund said gold remained a negligible asset within roughly $200 trillion of global institutional money.
“The real bull case for gold is that it is fully reincorporated in the financial system,” he said.
Many institutions did not even have 1% of their assets invested in gold, McGuire said. Over time, he believed some could allocate “one, two, three percentage points” of their portfolios to gold while reducing exposure to other asset classes they had become more concerned about.
The Texas Teachers Pension Fund, which McGuire said had about $240 billion in assets, had less than 2% invested in gold. Even that was relatively high for a pension fund, he said.
Paul Carne, EMEA delegated chief investment officer at Aon Investments, said portfolios managed by his team had held a strategic gold allocation of about 5.5% through an ETF, with the weighting at times rising as high as 9%.
Carne said the allocation was likely to fall closer to 4% as higher bond yields competed for capital, but gold would remain a long-term strategic holding.
“Whether it's five or four or three … it's gonna continue to live in that kind of zone,” he said.