In 2008, after 27 years of working for his sixth-generation family business that founded the C&A clothing retail chain, family entrepreneur Stephen Brenninkmeijer, created Willows Investments. He discusses funding and supporting promising ventures with a social mission. What is the mission of your family? To [...]

The legacy of Stanfield's: Like most great entrepreneurs, Charles Stanfield was part inventor, part marketer and part gambler. When he started his textile business in 1856, the Maritimes were fertile ground for success — a fresh start from his native England. Four years ago Jon [...]

This article was first published in www.news18.com on August 21, 2017; Authors- Nupur Pavan Bang and Kavil Ramachandran Founder shareholders have the right to question the CEO if the performance is not up to the mark. But they must realize their special status as the [...]

Last month, luxury lifestyle magazine August Man featured fathers and sons in midsize Singapore family businesses: Anthony Lim and sons Raymond and Jeremy of Cortina Watch, Alan Tan and son Alvan of Alan Photo, Tan Soo Pong and son Lawrence of Dragon Brand Bird’s Nest. [...]

Dilhan Fernando is a man of faith on many levels. The youngest son of the founder of Dilmah Tea has faith in the quality of the genuine Ceylon tea they produce, faith in the philanthropic Christian tenets his father raised in him and he instils [...]

The founder of every thriving family business faces an inevitable question: How should our ways of working evolve to meet the challenges of managing a growing company? Experts typically tell founders that the answer is to professionalize, meaning that they should emulate the structures, governance, [...]

Bill Ford, executive chairman of Ford Motor and great-grandson of founder Henry Ford, feels he didn’t get buy-in for his ideas and has installed a new CEO who he hopes will carry out his vision. The Nordstrom family is exploring taking Nordstrom Inc. private as [...]

Lucas' Papaw, Bundaberg Brewed Drinks, Blackmores. If not household items, these brands are certainly easy to find in pharmacies and supermarkets across Australia. All three businesses are still family owned. Their number of employees range from 30 to more than 1000, but John McLean, chief [...]

Family businesses face major challenges in working through ownership and management succession and family business leaders acknowledge the problem. However, few know where and how to develop a governance and succession plan. Visionaries need not go through the same periods of adversity. To preserve their [...]

Sri Lanka’s family business continuity will depend on their ability to have a clear vision and retaining family unity, business leader Shiromal Cooray said. “The failure to articulate the vision of the business in writing can be especially problematic as a company transitions from the [...]

Given the uproar over Ivanka Trump’s sitting in for her father at the “adult’s table” at the G-20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, earlier this summer, why it is that we seem so eager to cry “nepotism” where family enterprise is concerned. What is it, exactly, [...]

The odds of successfully transitioning a business from one generation to the next are extremely low. In fact, as each new generation ages to the point of needing a successor, it is even less likely that a transition to the next generation can be successfully [...]

Like most family-run enterprises across the globe, only 13 percent of those in Singapore survive till the third generation, according to a March 2017 survey of 100 firms done by KPMG and CPA Australia. Though statistics vary, the fraction of such Filipino family businesses is [...]

Innovation needs to be more pervasive amongst all levels of staff in family businesses, according to professional services firm KPMG Singapore. Recent research by the firm shows that innovation is currently mostly limited to founders and senior people in a family business when it is [...]

Companies in which founders and their families hold controlling stakes have the rare ability to maintain a long-term view. That can be a huge advantage, particularly when it comes to capital allocation. Should you be investing alongside them? According to data compiled by the Boston [...]

Reputation matters to all employers, but particularly to a family business that traces its ownership back to the Napoleonic Wars, and has its own money and name on the line with every deal. Signing on with NM Rothschild & Sons has the rider that being [...]

Family-owned businesses reaching a milestone of more than 100 years are indeed extraordinary, and Royal Selangor, a Malaysian company of Chinese descent that started in the 1880s, has proven that with a well-crafted Family Charter (constitution) and a timely succession process, the family business can [...]

There is no standard legal structure for family offices. The types and number of legal entities used in a family office differs depending on each family’s vision and goals, the family’s investment strategy, and the scope of services to be provided by the family office. [...]

The T. & A. Bata Shoe Company was founded in the late 1800s in the Czech Republic by Tomas Bata, his brother Antonin and his sister Anna. They came from a long generation of cobblers. The family-owned international business saw its tentacles spread in the [...]

It is difficult to overstate how important family businesses are. Some two-thirds of UK businesses are family-owned – 4.7 million in total. They employ more than 12 million people, approaching half of all people employed in the private sector. They generate more than a quarter [...]

With assets still predominately held by the first and second generations, the heads of most wealthy Asian families remain as key decision makers and they are often keen to stay actively involved in managing their own assets. This is despite the fact that many of [...]

Teddy Fong runs Million Dollar Baby, a $70 million children's furniture wholesaler his parents, Daniel and Maryann Fong, started in 1990. Almost three decades ago, Daniel Fong was a venture capitalist with an urge to start a company. He did some research and bought and [...]

The investment push into private companies is one of the big investment themes of the post-financial crisis, and its just getting going. This view was reinforced by what Robert Soros, the son of one of the great investment gurus of the last 50 years, George [...]

In an insightful research material by Schwartz and Bergfeld, the authors pointed to one country that seemed to challenge the third generation curse much better than others. Japan has seven out of the 10 oldest companies on the planet and also has the highest concentration [...]

It has been said that the first generation accumulates, the second preserves and the third squanders. And experienced bankers have seen their fair share of corporate family-based customers, so promising in earlier generations, lose direction or even implode when the grandchildren take over. Recognising the [...]

Joe Bauernfreund , who runs the £993 million British Empire Investment Trust, has revealed how he is investing in family holding companies to generate returns. The British Empire Investment Trust has increased its dividend for each of the past thirty years. The trust tends to [...]

Ve Interactive is the latest high profile name that serves as a reminder that many tech scale-ups have failed. There are many causes, but it shows that the short term goal of making the participators wealthy does not always pay off. A scale-up can engage [...]

There are many reasons why building a family business, is appealing. You might want build something with your children, work with family members you know and respect, as well as creating a foundation for generational wealth. There are processes you need to structure to give [...]

A family business can range from a small mom and pop business to large multi-million dollar publicly traded companies. Family businesses and their leaders often experience many of the common problems of a regular business, but also have an added layer of problems and dilemmas [...]

As much as 98 per cent of the world’s economic activity is accounted for by family businesses but for many companies, making that transition from entrepreneurship to a smoothly-run family business is difficult, says Allan Cohen, a professor in global leadership at Babson College, a [...]

Business people often have a tendency to concentrate so much on their day-to-day business that they end up losing sight of some pretty important basic matters, like their values. Values form the unconscious base of everything we do, and they impact so many of our [...]

Family office principals interviewed by Campden Wealth researchers for the new Private Equity and Co-Investing for Family Offices report, out today, said restricted access to high quality deals, limited team resources, and knowledge gaps were obstacles on direct investments. However, higher expected returns, absence of [...]

LEE Kum Kee International is a Hong Kong-based food company that manufactures oyster flavored sauce and a wide range of Chinese and Asian sauces. The brand was founded in 1888 by Lee Kum Sheung, a chef working in a small eatery that sold cooked oysters. [...]

Imagine a mom and dad at the age of 67 who own a small, but profitable bed and breakfast in New Hampshire. They want to retire soon, but their two kids aren’t interested in taking over the family business. What do they do? As the [...]

The business magazine Forbes-Middle East released the 2017 rankings for the top 100 Indian business owners in the Gulf region. The 61 year old retail magnate, Yusuff Ali M.A., Managing Director of Lulu Group International, came at the top of the list. Yusuff Ali hails [...]

The French tycoon, Vincent Bollore, aims to merge the media giant Vivendi and advertising firm Havas, the two groups that his family conglomerate controls. As per the merger plan, Vivendi offers to buy Group Bollore's 60 percent stake in Havas at a price of 9.25 [...]

Nicole Kushner Meyer, the next generation member of the Kushner properties group, invited rich Chinese investors to make investments in the group's luxury apartment complex Kushner 1, in New Jersey. She gave presentations to rich Chinese citizens and urged them to invest USD 500,000 in [...]

The 120 year old, Mumbai based Godrej Group's flagship company Godrej Consumer Products Limited (GCPL) gets a new Chairman. The company has appointed Nisaba Godrej, Chairman Adi Godrej's younger daughter as its executive chairman. According to the succession plan, the 75 years old patriarch, Adi [...]

Two family foundations are to gift USD 25mn each to the business school of the Utah State University. The gift from the Huntsman Foundation and Charles Koch Foundation will help the school expand its faculty and increase its student scholarship offers. The money will be [...]

Moldex Composites, the carbon composites technology arm of auto components firm, Rockman Industries, has set up an office in the UK. The Gurgaon based Hero group company has made the move with an aim to enter into Europe and the USA. “We just opened an [...]

The Olayan family, which owns one of the biggest conglomerates in Saudi Arabia plans to take public a part of its business and list it on the country's Tadawul stock exchange. The group may setup a holding company for 20 of its business units that [...]

The publisher of Business Insider, Berlin based publishing and digital media firm Axel Springer SE bought a stake in the taxi service firm Uber Technologies. Though the company did not disclose the amount of stake acquired or investment made, Springer said that the stake was [...]

The Arnault family, which controls the French luxury products maker, LVMH Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy SE, announced a $13bn plan to buy the 25.9% outstanding stake of the fashion firm Christian Dior SE. With this, the Arnault family will take complete control of Christian Dior. [...]

In a 2007 article published in the New York Times, author Nora Klaver of May Day! Asking for Help in Times of Need says that asking for help “makes business sense.” Yet, it is rare that small-business owners — especially family owned businesses — will [...]

A common question for family business succession, and particularly for primary production family business, is when control of the business should be passed to the next generation, without risking the valuable assets of the business if something goes wrong. Unfortunately, it is far too common [...]

Fast-growing, mid-sized family businesses around the world have identified corporate social responsibility (CSR) as an important element for their success, according to a joint report by Citi Private Bank and UK-based family business information provider Campden Wealth Research. The report, entitled The Top 50 Global [...]

It strikes me that one of the most interesting areas of research around the world of family enterprises today is innovation. There are a number of reasons for this, but, from my perspective, two stand out. One is obvious and involves how family businesses continue [...]

Hermès and LVMH announcing record profits for 2016 suggests the French family businesses are resuscitating the moribund $1.1 trillion global luxury market despite ongoing political and economic uncertainty. Hermès Group, the French high fashion clothing and accessories manufacturer and retailer started its 180th anniversary in [...]

An oft-cited statistic is that only 30% of family businesses make it through the second generation, 10-15% through the third, and 3-5% through the fourth. These are disheartening numbers. But let’s put them in perspective. A study of 25,000 publicly traded companies from 1950 to [...]

In business, few things can be as stressful as running a company that’s staffed and managed by a mix of family and non-family employees. The constant juggling of family drama, emotions and entitlements conflicting against the needs of your non-familial staff can quickly contribute to [...]