The Hong Kong government will station an officer in Brussels, the home of the European Union, to encourage European family offices to invest in the city and use it as a gateway to the Greater Bay Area, the South China Morning Post has learned.

It marks the latest effort by the government to promote the city as a hub for family offices, a goal put forward by Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po in his budget speech in 2021.

"Family offices here in Europe have a great interest in Hong Kong and the Greater Bay Area," said Eddie Cheung, the head of the Hong Kong Economic Trade Office in Brussels in an interview with the Post.

Do you have questions about the biggest topics and trends from around the world? Get the answers with SCMP Knowledge, our new platform of curated content with explainers, FAQs, analyses and infographics brought to you by our award-winning team.

Cheung, who has been busy hosting events promoting the 25th anniversary of the city's handover to China, has contacted many wealthy families in the EU who are interested in investing in Hong Kong.

"The business contacts we have met during the many handover events are realistic and they just want to know more about the business opportunities in China, particularly the Greater Bay Area," he said. "Hong Kong is the ideal location for them to learn more about the mainland business environments."

The new officer is going through recruitment process and will report for duty in Autumn, Cheung said.

Based in Cheung's office, the new officer will handle promotional work in Germany, France, Italy, Switzerland and other European countries to attract family offices to invest or set up subsidiaries in Hong Kong.

"Family offices tend to be conservative and seek to diversify risk," Cheung said. "Hong Kong's attractiveness is that it is a pivotal centre for family offices' diversification strategy to gain exposure into assets in mainland China and Asia."

The combined value of overseas deals done by European family offices rose from US$144.2 billion in 2016 to US$227.6 billion in 2021, having dipped to US$152 billion in 2020 because of the pandemic, according to the PwC Family Office Deal Study which tracks deals of 5,200 family offices worldwide.

As the value of acquisitions by European family offices grows, there is a rising trend of so-called "club deals" in Europe - where a family office co-invests with other investors in an acquisition. In 2021, a third of all deals were club deals, compared to 8 per cent in 2016, the PwC report said.