When we think of family businesses, we tend to conjure up images of homely convenience stores and humble neighborhood pizza parlors, small-scale operations competing with huge faceless multinationals. Yet a surprising number of these massive global enterprises are themselves family controlled.
According to the Center for Family Business at the University of St. Gallen, a privately held firm is considered family-owned if a family controls more than 50% of the voting rights, while a publicly held company is defined as family-owned if a family holds at least a 32% share of the voting rights. All company revenue figures quoted in this piece have been provided by the university.
Continental AG (Schaeffler family)
Maria-Elisabeth Schaeffler and her son Georg Jr. own the Schaeffler Group, the German ball bearings giant that was founded as Industrie GmbH by her late husband Georg Sr. back in 1946. AG Continental is the Schaeffler’s Group largest investment.
Anheuser-Busch InBev SA (Anheuser and Busch families)
Adolphus Busch (pictured) was the German-born co-founder of Anheuser-Busch, alongside his father-in-law, Eberhard Anheuser. The Belgian-Brazilian beverage and brewing company was enlarged in 2016 when AB Bev purcahsed SABMiller and concluded a merger of the two titles. The deal was valued at $11.5 billion.
The families now own 41.3% of the business overall, with August Busch IV, great-great-grandson of Adolphus Busch, sitting on the board for the beverage and brewing company.
Dalian Wanda Group (Wang family)
Multinational conglomerate Dalian Wanda is one of the world’s biggest property developers and owns one of the largest cinema chains, Wanda Cinemas. Founded by businessman Wang Jianlin in 1988, the company has annual revenues of $44.7 billion.
Amer Technology (Wang family)
Cable and copper supplier Amer employs more than 15,500 staff. Headed by billionaire Wang Wenyin, it has annual revenues of $47.8 billion.
LG Corp. (Koo and Huh families)
Electronics giant LG accounts for nearly 70% of the Koo family fortune. Founder Koo In-Hwoi passed the company down to his son, and then to his grandchild, Koo Bon-Moo (pictured).
