by Radu Magdin
Europe’s next investment story may not be about finding new markets. It may be about taking a second, more serious look at the ones that have quietly reshaped the continent over the past thirty years. Central and Eastern Europe is the clearest case. The region attracted multinationals, built industrial muscle and produced a generation of entrepreneurs who turned start-ups into national champions. It is now ready to compete for a different kind of investor: the global family office and the high-net-worth individual who thinks in decades, not quarters.
CEE is not starting from scratch. Foreign capital is already here, local fortunes have matured, and family-controlled groups are becoming more sophisticated by the year. What is missing is the bridge between these strengths and the growing global pool of patient, multigenerational capital. Poland and Romania, the two largest economies on the EU’s eastern flank, have the strongest case to make.
Family capital has become a force in its own right
Family offices are no longer quiet wealth-preservation vehicles. Many now operate as fully fledged investment platforms, active in private equity, real estate, infrastructure, venture capital and direct acquisitions of operating businesses.
PwC’s Global Family Office Deals Study 2025 shows Europe’s share of global family office transactions rising from 19% in the second half of 2015 to 25% in the first half of 2025. North America still dominates, with 63% of deals in the latest period, but Europe has clearly moved up the list of priorities.
The direction of travel is also changing. According to UBS’s Global Family Office Report 2026, 60% of family offices plan to adjust their strategic asset allocation over the next twelve months, the highest share UBS has ever recorded. Geopolitical conflict now tops their risk list, ahead of debt and recession, and many are rethinking concentration in a single currency or region.
None of this means family offices are already heading east. UBS research from 2025 put Eastern Europe at around 3% of the geographic allocation of European respondents. That is a small number. It is also the most interesting number in this debate. The distance between what the region’s economies are worth and how little family capital is exposed to them is precisely the opening.
CEE gives international families a way to diversify inside Europe, buy into businesses that are already proven and growing, and take positions in sectors that are becoming strategic for the whole continent: energy, defence-adjacent industry, food security, logistics and technology. The task is not to invent a destination. It is to put an already attractive region in front of investors who have not yet looked closely.
From founders to family investors
The deepest change in CEE over the past decade has been the coming of age of its entrepreneurial class.
The founders who built companies after 1989 are now thinking like investors. Their agenda has moved from running an operating business to succession, diversification, wealth preservation and international growth. I see this shift every week in conversations with business families across the region. The questions are no longer only about the next contract. They are about the next generation.
The Czech Republic shows how far this can go. The investment groups associated with Daniel Křetínský and the Kellner family grew from Central European roots into international players with portfolios across Europe and beyond.
Poland has given its entrepreneurs better tools. The family foundation, introduced in 2023, offers a domestic framework for succession and the long-term stewardship of business wealth, so that fortunes built in Poland can also be managed from Poland.
Romania is moving along a parallel track. Its leading entrepreneurial families are diversifying, acquiring and entering new industries. The Pavăl family, behind Dedeman and Pavăl Holding, is the best-known example. Its interests now stretch well beyond DIY retail into real estate, energy and other sectors, and its acquisition of Praktiker Hellas in 2025 marked one of the most visible moves abroad by Romanian family capital.
Not all of these groups are family offices in the strict institutional sense. That is beside the point. What matters is that the region now has sophisticated family-controlled capital able to act as investor, co-investor and international business builder. For a global family office, that changes the equation. Families invest with families. They look for trusted local partners as much as for markets, and CEE can now offer them.
Poland and Romania: two stories, one direction
Poland and Romania bring different strengths to the table, and they fit together better than they compete.
Poland offers scale, industrial depth, a large domestic market and an increasingly mature private capital ecosystem. Its family foundation regime signals a structured, long-term approach to entrepreneurial wealth.
Romania offers a different mix: an established base of international investors, real opportunities in energy, agribusiness, technology, manufacturing and logistics, and a geography that opens onto the Black Sea, the Balkans, the Republic of Moldova and, eventually, the reconstruction of Ukraine. Few places in the European Union sit as close to the continent’s next big economic projects.
Both countries already attract international investors. Their challenge is to translate that appeal into offers built specifically for family capital: mid-sized businesses ready for acquisition and growth, industrial platforms, strategic infrastructure and partnerships with local owners facing succession.
Seen together, Poland and Romania can help position the EU’s eastern flank as one complementary destination for global family capital, rather than a collection of markets each fighting for attention on its own.
Romania: from investment destination to family capital partner
Romania has an advantage it tends to undersell. It already has a substantial base of international investors, successful domestic entrepreneurs and assets with real commercial value. It does not need a new economic identity to interest family offices. It needs to make what it already has visible and accessible to them.
A stronger Romanian family capital ecosystem can rest on three pillars. The first is Romanian entrepreneurial families looking to diversify and go international. The second is global family offices interested in direct investments and co-investments. The third is high-net-worth individuals who could use Romania as a base for business, regional investment and long-term wealth planning.
The most promising sectors are clear: power generation and storage, agribusiness and food processing, industrial modernisation, logistics, technology, healthcare and, increasingly, succession-driven acquisitions of family-owned companies whose founders are approaching retirement without a clear heir.
Romania can also become a meeting point between international family capital and the next generation of Romanian entrepreneurs, linking three agendas that are usually handled separately: investment attraction, family business succession and the internationalisation of Romanian companies.
The prize, then, is bigger than capital for individual projects. It is an ecosystem in which Romanian and international entrepreneurial families invest, build and grow together. Romania should aim to be more than a place where family capital lands. It should aim to be a trusted partner for the families who own it.
The Greek lesson: families decide as a whole
CEE can learn from countries that have made the attraction of wealthy families an explicit policy goal.
Greece is the most instructive example in our neighbourhood. At the end of 2019 it introduced a flat-tax regime for high-net-worth individuals moving their tax residence to the country, and later added a dedicated family office framework. In 2025 it went further, halving the minimum annual operating expenditure required of a Greek family office from €1 million to €500,000 and clarifying that services provided to foreign family-owned companies do not make those companies Greek tax residents.
The lesson goes beyond tax. Wealthy families make connected decisions about residence, business operations, investment, succession, their children’s education and quality of life. A country that wants their capital has to understand the whole decision, not just one line of it.
Poland has already built mechanisms for structuring family wealth and offers a lump-sum tax option for qualifying new residents with foreign income. Romania would benefit from a coordinated approach of its own, designed around its economic priorities. Competing on tax alone is a race few countries win. Predictable regulation, efficient administration, real investment facilitation and access to quality wealth management services are what make families stay.
It also helps to separate two goals that are often confused: attracting wealthy individuals to live here and attracting their capital to invest here. The two can reinforce each other, but they are not the same thing. A family office may be run from London, Zurich, Singapore or Dubai and still invest heavily in Romanian companies. Romania should compete for both, and for the relocation of family investment activity wherever the business case is genuine.
From FDI attraction to Family Capital Attraction
For three decades, CEE governments have competed, successfully, for foreign direct investment. Their development models were built around multinationals, industrial projects and international financial institutions.
The next step is to add a more refined instrument to that toolbox: Family Capital Attraction. It means engaging global family offices, high-net-worth individuals and entrepreneurial families directly, as long-term partners rather than as another source of financing.
Romania is well placed to lead this in the region. It is already an attractive investment destination, it has successful entrepreneurial families of its own, it offers opportunities across strategic industries, and it sits at the junction between the European Union, the Black Sea and Ukraine’s future reconstruction.
A Romanian Family Capital Attraction strategy would combine curated investment opportunities, co-investment platforms with Romanian business families, tailored facilitation for investors and a competitive environment for wealth structuring, succession and international operations. It would also open a dedicated channel of investment diplomacy towards family offices in Western Europe, North America, the Gulf, India, Southeast Asia and Latin America.
This requires a different playbook from classic investment promotion. Family offices work through small decision-making teams, personal networks and relationships built over years. Their choices weigh financial return alongside entrepreneurial instinct, legacy and the desire to diversify. A roadshow and a glossy brochure will not reach them. Trusted relationships, credible local partners, well-structured deals and consistent follow-through will. This is where our institutions, from economic diplomacy to investment agencies, need stronger political backing and a clear mandate to play the long game.
The ambition should be stated plainly. Romania should seek to attract the investments of the world’s entrepreneurial families and to become their trusted European partner over the long term. That would mark a real evolution in economic diplomacy: from courting foreign companies to building lasting relationships with the families behind global capital.
Go East: from capital attraction to capital partnerships
Central and Eastern Europe has already proved it can attract international business. Its next test is to compete for international family capital.
We should be honest about where things stand. There is no evidence yet of a sustained wave of global family office money flowing into CEE. What the evidence does show is a set of increasingly sophisticated local family investors, solid underlying economies and a global investor community actively rethinking how and where it diversifies. That combination does not stay open forever.
Poland brings scale, industrial depth and a more structured family wealth ecosystem. Romania brings proven investment appeal, entrepreneurial energy, strategic geography and room to build new partnerships. Together, they can make the region far more visible to the world’s entrepreneurial families.
The region’s story has to change accordingly. For years it was told in the language of low costs and corporate investment. The next version should be told in the language of entrepreneurship, partnership and long-term value. The next chapter of CEE’s success will be written by the multinationals that invest in the region, and just as much by the families that choose to invest alongside it.
The invitation is simple. Go East. The region is no longer undiscovered, but its investment story is far from finished.
By: N. Peter Kramer