It is an overcast morning, and about 20 casually dressed men and women are standing on a terrace enjoying a break from their seminars. Lake Constance glimmers before them, surrounded by pristine Swiss countryside.
这是一个阴天的上午，大约20位穿着随意的男女站在露台上享受研讨会的休息时间，眼前是波光粼粼的康士坦茨湖(Lake Constance)，周围环绕着古朴的瑞士乡村。
The panorama is breathtaking but the delegates are probably used to better. They are mainly billionaires, congregating at this UBS “boot camp” in Wolfsberg and hoping to gain insights into a topic that unites their 10 nationalities — how to pass their wealthto the next generation without family feuds and foolish business decisions.
这里的景色美得令人窒息，但这些代表们可能早已习惯了更美的景色。他们大都是亿万富翁，聚集在这个位于沃尔夫斯堡的瑞银(UBS)“新兵训练营”，希望能够更深刻地理解一项主题——如何在不引起家族不和、不做出愚蠢商业决策的情况下将他们的财富传给下一代。这一主题将这些来自10个不同国家的人团结到一起。
Here they are stripped of some of the trappings of the super-rich. No staff are allowed. Everyone stays in the same style of hotel room to “create a community”, so there are no suites, just regular rooms with large beds, two comfortable chairs, sleek en-suite bathrooms and local art on the wall.
在这里，他们被剥去了超级富豪的一些外在标志。助理人员不许入内。每个人都住在风格相同的酒店房间里以“创建一个社区”。所以，这里没有套房，只是普通房间，里面有大床、两把舒适的椅子、光洁的独立浴室以及挂在墙上的当地艺术品。
The wealth management arm of UBS casts itself in the role of adviser and educator for the three-day camp, which the Swiss bank uses to deepen client relationships and entice new ones to its private bank, the group’s most important division. Outside speakers are also used.
瑞银财富管理部门在为期三天的训练营中将自身角色定义为顾问和教育者。瑞银利用这一项目来深化客户关系，并为其私人银行（该集团最重要的部门）招揽新客户。该项目也会请外面的嘉宾来演讲。
Such families will already be surrounded by “myriad experts and professors and lawyers and all that”, says Joe Stadler, UBS’s head of ultra-high net worth business.
瑞银超高净值业务负责人乔•施塔德勒(Joe Stadler)称，这些家族早已经被“无数专家、教授、律师等等”包围。
The Swiss financial services group is trying to drum up business by offering something that is less easy to procure than on-call expertise, though: the opportunity to rub shoulders with the other guests staying in Wolfsberg’s merely-luxurious digs.
不过，这家瑞士金融服务集团正试图通过提供一些比随叫随到的专家服务更不易获得的东西来招揽生意：在沃尔夫斯堡并不豪华的酒店里与其他客人接触的机会。
“Like-minded families from across time zones . . . that’s what they really value,” says Mr Stadler.
施塔德勒说：“来自不同时区、有相同想法的家族……这是他们真正看重的。”
At this particular camp, attendees include a European family into their fourth generation of succession, trying to work out how to keep the family business together.
在这个特殊的训练营，参与者包括一个传承至第四代的欧洲家族，他们试图找到保持家族企业完整的办法。
The father tells the group he favours having a specialist run the business but his wife, sitting next to him, wants to keep things in the family.
家族中的父亲告诉瑞银，他更想任用一名专业人士管理企业，但坐在旁边的妻子不想让外人插手家族事务。
Across the room, an Asian father ponders what do to about a son who has no interest in leading his family business. An Egyptian dad frets about how he can keep his four daughters involved in the business when, traditionally in Egypt, married women are closer to their husbands’ families.
房间的另一头，一位来自亚洲的父亲正在发愁该怎么办，因为自己的儿子对领导家族企业不感兴趣。一位来自埃及的父亲则在苦恼如何才能让四个女儿在婚后继续参与家族生意，因为在埃及，已婚妇女通常与丈夫的家族关系更密切。
“I am greatly relieved to see different families with almost similar experiences,” says one attendee, who prefers to remain anonymous, adding that the camp had given him ideas he could present to his wider family.
“看到不同的家族都拥有几乎类似的经历让我感到非常放松，”一位不愿透露姓名的参与者说。他可以将在此次训练营获得的观念分享给家族中更多的人，他补充说。
UBS, the world’s largest wealth manager by invested assets, is not alone in providing such a service to clients. Other private banks also run educational sessions to woo their richest customers, especially on the subject of younger family members taking up duties in the family empire.
按投资资产算，瑞银是全球最大的财富管理机构，但它并不是唯一一家为客户提供此种服务的机构。其他私人银行也推出了吸引富豪客户的教育课程，尤其是针对年轻的家族成员接班家族企业帝国的问题。
UBS, which has identified “ultras” as the highest potential growth group in its private bank, spends a “low single-digit million euro” amount running camps like this annually.
瑞银已经将“超高净值”人士确定为其私人银行中增长潜力最大的群体，每年花费“数百万欧元”举办这样的训练营。
James Chappell, a Berenberg analyst, says the pay-off is hard to quantify: “Like a lot of what you do around ultra-high net worths, it’s sometimes hard to measure the value of the process, but I don’t see how it’s going to do anything but help.”
德国贝伦贝格银行(Berenberg Bank)分析师詹姆斯•查普尔(James Chappell)称，这样做的回报很难量化：“就像许多你围绕超高净值人士做的事情，有时很难衡量这个过程的价值，但我相信这将有所帮助。”
The willingness of the super-rich to attend such courses can be viewed as another manifestation of the forces driving the sales of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century.
有一种力量推动了托马斯•皮凯蒂(Thomas Piketty)的《21世纪的资本》(Capital in the Twenty-First Century)的销售，超级富豪参加此类课程的意愿，可以被视为这种力量的另一种表现。
As the squeezed middle classes turn to the best-seller to understand how and why they lost ground to the wealthy, billionaires seek bespoke advice on how to maintain their increased advantage.
当被挤压的中产阶级购买这本畅销书，想要弄明白他们如何（以及为什么）输给富人时，亿万富翁试图寻找为他们量身定制的建议，以便维持自己增加的优势。
Mr Stadler says the rich are indeed particularly concerned about preserving their fortunes now because the wealth held by the top 0.1 per cent has been rising for decades, so they fear an “inflection point” is coming.
施塔德勒说，富人如今的确特别关心保持自己的财富，因为几十年来，最富有的0.1%人群所持有的财富一直在上涨，所以他们担心“转折点”正在到来。
Some of the other issues addressed — such as sibling rivalry — are more timeless. Others are cultural. “In the Asian culture, they send the children to places like Harvard, they come back and parents realise very soon that they are not only better educated they are also infected with quite a different culture,” says Peter May, honorary professor at WHU- Otto Beisheim School of Management, who hosts some of the seminars.
一些其他需要解决的问题——如兄弟姐妹间的竞争——更是一直都存在的。还有文化问题。“在亚洲文化中，他们把孩子送到哈佛大学之类的地方，但子女回来后，父母们很快意识到，他们不仅受到了更好的教育，还浸染了一种截然不同的文化，”德国科布伦次奥托贝森管理研究院(WHU-Otto Beisheim School of Management)荣誉教授彼得•梅(Peter May)说。该学院承办了一些这样的研讨会。
In many emerging markets, the tradition of the oldest son inheriting is still prevalent. “There are cases where the son has been groomed . . . and then the father finds out, after six or seven years, the guy is not [the best choice],” says Mr Stadler. “I’ve sat in some of these discussions with families.”
在许多新兴市场，长子继承家族企业的传统依然盛行。“在某些情况下，一个儿子被选中进行重点培养……而六、七年之后父亲发现，这个家伙不是（最好的选择），”施塔德勒说，“我曾参与一些家族的此类讨论。”
Laura Pancera, UBS’s head of ultra-high net worth development, says cross-cultural exchanges — between, say, Europeans who already have a family office to manage their affairs and Asians considering setting one up — are particularly useful on the course.
瑞银超高净值开发部负责人劳拉•潘切拉(Laura Pancera)说，课程中的跨文化交流——比如已设有管理家族事务的家族理财室的欧洲人，与正在考虑设立家族理财室的亚洲人之间的交流——尤其有帮助。
When they are not wandering the low-rise complex chatting, the participants are ploughing through a curriculum that ranges from family corporate governance to “ruin probability”— the statistical likelihood of running out of cash.
当参与者们不是在楼层不高的酒店中信步闲聊，他们就会努力探讨从家族企业治理、到“破产概率”（现金耗尽的统计可能性）在内的广泛课程。
One issue UBS does not want to discuss publicly is tax, an increasingly sensitive topic after Swiss banks were forced to pay penalties for helping clients evade tax in the US. UBS paid $780m in a 2009 settlement and avoided criminal prosecution.
瑞银不想公开讨论的一个议题是纳税，在瑞士的银行因帮助美国客户逃税被迫支付罚金后，这一话题变得日益敏感。瑞银在2009年支付7.8亿美元的和解金，避免了遭受刑事起诉。
At Wolfsberg, delegates also get first-hand accounts of botched successions, including from Beatrice Rodenstock, of the German spectacle maker Rodenstock (see box). Experts agree, though, that there is not just one path to success.
在沃尔夫斯堡，代表们还可以听到关于失败继承的第一手案例，包括来自德国眼镜制造商罗敦司得(Rodenstock)的贝阿特丽策•罗登施托克(Beatrice Rodenstock)的讲述。但专家认为，通向成功并非只有一条路径。
Mr Stadler cites two extremes to make the point: the Haniel investment company in Germany, which traces its roots back to 1756 and whose more than 680 family shareholders are not allowed to run anything in the business; and the family behind the French luxury goods maker Hermès, which is much more hands-on in its approach. “Both are successful,” Mr Stadler says.
施塔德勒引用了两个极端案例来证明这一点：创始于1756年的德国投资公司Haniel，其680多个家族股东都不被允许参与企业经营；法国奢侈品制造商爱马仕(Hermès)背后的家族在企业经营上则更加亲力亲为。施塔德勒说：“两家企业都很成功。”
Lasting three days, UBS’s “family transition programme” does not claim to be able to convert ill-suited or reluctant successors into CEOs of the future. Nor does it offer the kind of entertainment some attendees might be used to.
这个持续三天的瑞银“家族过渡项目”(family transition programme)并未宣称，能把不合适或不情愿的继承者们变成未来的首席执行官。它也不提供一些参与者可能已经习惯了的娱乐方式。
“I’m not supporting bringing the young guys to a disco,” says Ms Pancera. “In the past we did a lot of that and what happened was they didn’t come in any more in the morning.”
“我不支持把这些年轻人带进迪厅，”潘切拉说，“过去我们经常那样做，而结果是他们上午再也不来上课了。”