Carvajal · Colombia
Success
Manuel Carvajal Valencia founded the company in Cali in 1904 with a printing press imported from Europe. The Carvajal group today spans paper, packaging, technology, and real estate. The family is in its sixth generation, with roughly 280 members, and governs the business through a shareholders' assembly, a family council, and a written constitution. In 1960 Manuel's son persuaded the cousins to transfer the first 40% of the company to a family foundation. The foundation today holds 23.5%, meaning that portion of the business cannot be sold by any individual descendant. The family received the IMD Global Family Business Award in 2022.
Lee Kum Kee · Hong Kong
Success
In 1888, in southern China, Lee Kum Sheung accidentally caramelized a pot of oyster broth and turned the result into a sauce. The company has been run by Lees for five generations. After the 1997 Asian financial crisis brought the patriarch's youngest son close to leaving, the family commissioned a written constitution, adopted in 2002. It governs nearly every family-business overlap: spouses are barred from working in the company, members retire at 65 from operations and at 70 from the Family Council, and younger heirs must work outside the business before they can return to it. Its principle, Si Li Ji Ren, translates roughly as "consider others' interests before one's own."
House of Liechtenstein
Success
The House of Liechtenstein traces its origin to 1136, when Hugo von Liechtenstein built the family's first castle in Lower Austria. The principality of Liechtenstein, established in 1719, is named for the family. Written family law began with the 1606 Family Covenant signed by Prince Karl I and his brothers, which set aside part of the family estate as inalienable property of the dynasty. Prince Hans-Adam II revised the Hausgesetz in 1993 and in 2004 transferred day-to-day political authority to his son Alois as regent. The family also owns LGT Group, today the largest royal-family-owned private bank in the world, which manages more than $650 billion in assets across Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.
Pritzker · United States
Failure
The Pritzker family built one of the largest private fortunes in the United States: Hyatt Hotels, the Marmon Group of around sixty industrial companies, and a network of approximately 2,500 trusts that held the empire together across generations. In 2002, nineteen-year-old Liesel Pritzker, an actress and Columbia student, sued her father Robert and eleven older cousins for $6 billion, alleging that assets in trusts established for her and her brother had been moved out years earlier without their knowledge. The case settled in 2005. Liesel and her brother Matthew each received roughly $500 million. The settlement also triggered a separate agreement among the older cousins to formally divide the Pritzker holdings into eleven independent branches.
Guccio Gucci founded the company in Florence in 1921 as a leather-goods workshop. After his death his sons Aldo and Rodolfo expanded the business internationally; by the 1980s the next generation was openly fighting over shares, board seats, and creative control. In 1986 Aldo Gucci was sentenced to a year in U.S. prison for tax evasion, after his son Paolo turned over evidence to the IRS. Maurizio Gucci, Rodolfo's son, consolidated control of the company by buying out his cousins, borrowing heavily to do so. In 1993, deeply in debt, he sold the family's remaining 50% stake to the Bahrain-based investment firm Investcorp. Two years later his ex-wife Patrizia Reggiani arranged his murder.