Family business insights
Delve into the intricate world of family businesses, where succession planning, governance structures, wealth preservation and intergenerational wealth transfer take centre stage. Whether you are part of a family business or a wealth manager supporting family clients, understanding these dynamics is key to navigating the challenges and opportunities they present.
Understanding family businesses and generational transition
These articles explore how multi-generational enterprises manage these transitions with clarity and foresight, focusing on strategies for governance, succession and preserving value for long-term success.
Family business
Reviving an iconic family whisky business
Whisky takes time to mature, and so do family businesses. Leonard Russell of Ian Macleod Distillers in Broxburn, Scotland, explains how long-term thinking shapes everything from distillery revivals to succession planning.
Family business
Reshaping a family business while honouring its elders
Tong Heng has been a mainstay of Singapore’s traditional Chinese pastry scene for 90 years. But when Ana Fong joined the family business, run by her elders, the third generation, she saw it needed to be made relevant for a new generation. Her task was more complicated than she had imagined.
Family business
Harnessing tradition to safeguard for the future
Ken Koh joined his family’s business at a challenging time. His vision of how to leverage the company’s traditional methods to create a niche as a premium player proved to be a pathway to success, and now he is diversifying into other sectors while nurturing the next generation.
Family business
The art of wealth management: a hybrid strategy for family assets
For families managing significant wealth, the focus has broadened from protecting capital to shaping its long-term role across generations. Global mobility, expanding fortunes and longer intergenerational overlap have made wealth management a more intricate exercise. Families are turning to hybrid solutions that combine the alignment of a family office with the scale and expertise of professional wealth managers, allowing them to balance control, flexibility and continuity.
Family business
Boodles: sixth generation of a historic British family jewellery
With a new London flagship opening and a new generation in charge, UK society jeweller Boodles is entering its most ambitious chapter yet. Joint Managing Directors James Amos and Jody Wainwright are steering the family jeweller through expansion and succession, while including a female family member as an executive for the first time in the company’s history.
Family business
How families are rewriting the rules of generational wealth
Longer lives, shifting values and global family ties are reshaping the ways in which wealth gets passed down – and altering what legacy truly means.
Family business
How to run a family company for 25 generations
The Mazzei family of Fonterutoli, outside Florence, has run its vineyard estates since the time of the Medicis. But much has changed over the past three decades, as they prepare to hand over to the next generation.
Family business
Creating an effective succession structure for a family business
Along with his brothers, Pascal Mouawad is the fourth-generation custodian of a luxury jeweller with boutiques around the world. But while the business may sparkle, the succession journey has not always been easy and his generation have learned lessons they are passing on to their children.
Family business
The brothers who refreshed an Alpine icon
Patrick and Claudio Dietrich are the fifth generation to run Waldhaus Sils, a historic, grand hotel near St. Moritz. However, taking over the reins meant overcoming economic challenges, grappling with operational issues and dealing with the weight of legacy, from which they have learned invaluable lessons.
Family business
Enea is building a legacy based on giving back to nature
Enzo Enea has transformed his family business into one of the world’s largest landscape architecture firms. Now, his daughter Guenda has joined the company and together they are nurturing the next phase of the company’s growth.
Family business
Independence is at the heart of the Germano de Sousa Group’s success and strength
It might be known today as “the Laboratory of Portugal”, but it wasn’t always the country’s largest clinical laboratory group. In fact, its origins were relatively modest. Here, we speak with the group’s founder and his two children, and chart this family business’s remarkable rise.
Family business
Nurturing the next generation: challenges and opportunities
The global economist and author Noreena Hertz has spent her career working at the intersection of economics, politics, geopolitics, technology and society. Here, she takes us through her research into Gen Z, or Generation K as she prefers to call them, and describes how their attitudes, behaviours and values are reshaping businesses around the world.
Family business
Rethinking family wealth and legacy
Professor Marta Widz has spent her career studying entrepreneurial families and researching the complex ways in which they cultivate, foster and pass down family wealth. Here, she talks us through what makes business families so unique and explains why we need to re-examine our approach to them.
Family business
Building legacies and bringing families together
Every entrepreneurial family is unique, and so is the way each will choose to transfer its wealth, identity and legacy down the generations. Here, we speak with Pictet’s Honora Ducatillon and Christoph Courth about building a legacy and how to successfully manage intergenerational wealth transfer.
Family business
Honouring the past whilst forging the future
Sisters Marie and Valentine Barbier-Mueller had to take over the leadership of their family’s company in dramatic and challenging circumstances. But their father’s long-term planning and preparation guided the way forward. Today, the pair share the CEO role and take a view of the future that is based in humility and a hard-earned sense of perspective.
Family business
Philanthropy is this family’s North Star
Vince Fong is the fourth generation of the family that owns and runs one of Hong Kong’s biggest private real-estate companies. While his older brother joined the family firm, Vince has forged his own path as a serial entrepreneur. Here, we find out how that dynamic plays out and learn how the values of humility and generosity have been passed down the generations.
Family business
Becoming one of the world’s most lauded female chefs
How Anne-Sophie Pic turned her family’s famous restaurant into a global culinary empire spanning Lausanne to Hong Kong with her husband, and became one of the world’s most acclaimed female chefs in the process.
Family business · 13 Aug 2025
The ABCs of Family Governance
As families expand and evolve, their needs and dynamics become more complex. Creating a family governance framework provides clarity around roles, supports strong relationships, and helps ensure the family’s legacy thrives across generations.
Family business · 06 Jan 2025
Antoine Roland-Billecart ― Ripe for success
Billecart-Salmon is one of the world’s most historic and prestigious champagne houses. Here, sixth-generation co-owner Antoine Roland-Billecart shares an insight into how the business works and explains why a slower approach is sometimes best.
Family business · 18 Nov 2024
Alfredo De Massis ― Innovation through tradition
Professor Alfredo De Massis describes how family companies can ignite innovation, whilst also mitigating some of the biggest risks and challenges born out of family ownership.
Family business · 11 Nov 2024
Jan Ryde ― The rest is business
Jan Ryde, the fifth-generation CEO and owner of Swedish bed company Hästens, has transformed his family’s small business into a globally renowned premium brand. Here, he talks us through how he managed this through smart positioning, adopting an optimistic mindset, and creating dreamy products.
Family business · 23 Oct 2024
Olivier Audemars and Ilaria Resta ― Ahead of the times
We sit down with the fourth-generation vice chairman of the board and the newly installed CEO of Audemars Piguet, one of Switzerland’s most iconic watch brands, and discuss how to run a company with a long history and high ambitions for the future.
Family business · 17 Oct 2024
Estate planning: tackling fundamental questions to build a secure legacy
Addressing thorny issues early and applying the right structuring can bring peace of mind.
Family business · 10 Oct 2024
Philippe d’Ornano ― Maintaining growth and success across generations
Whether it’s developing new products or investing in charitable projects to support society at large, family-owned cosmetics giant Sisley always adopts a long-term view. We speak to ceo and president Philippe d’Ornano about the company’s history and how it is facing up to an uncertain future.
Family business
Family legacy: keeping the entrepreneurial spirit alive
Family culture, communication styles, and learning opportunities can be designed to cultivate and encourage entrepreneurship.
Family business · 24 Apr 2024
The race to become Asia’s wealth management hub
The region’s big financial centres are vying to attract high-net-worth clients – but to do that they’ll need to align with a new generation’s shifting values.
Family business
Family offices on the impact front line
Family offices have long acted as managers, stewards and confidants to the wealthiest, playing a trusted role in how they run their assets, their businesses and their lives. Today that role is changing.
Family business · 24 Apr 2024
The psychology of wealth: fostering resilience and purpose in children
Raising children to have a responsible, resilient, and well-adjusted attitude to money is a challenge. Wealthy parents have their work cut out to impart drive, ambition, and a healthy attitude to money.
Family business · 29 Feb 2024
Robert Buchbauer — Insights and lessons from a broad and varied business career
We sit down with the investor, entrepreneur and one-time CEO of Swarovski, and hear his personal views on what it takes to succeed as a founder and how to build robust governance within a company.
Family business · 10 Oct 2023
Thinking aloud on personal values
The role of the private banker has changed. It’s no longer just about investments, it’s about honesty, trust and understanding the needs of the family, for today and for tomorrow.
Family business · 30 Sep 2023
Prevention is better than cure
Where family feuds bleed into business – or vice versa – the consequences can be costly. Frictions over family affairs can trigger professional conflicts, and workplace problems filter into homes. The social boundaries that would curb a sharp word to a colleague become blurred when relationships are intimate – and lifelong. Preparing the way for handling, or preventing, difficult family disputes can save money as well as sanity, and keep both intact over the long-term.
Family business · 14 Apr 2023
USM ― Fashionable Furnishing
A Swiss hardware company created a stylish modular metal furniture system in the 1960s as a flexible storage solution to accompany its growth. It has since become a design icon in offices and homes around the world.
Family business · 17 Mar 2023
Markus Boesch stands at the helm of one of the world’s most historic boat brands
The fourth-generation owner of the eponymous Swiss boat-builder took over from his father and uncle and is now chief executive and the only member of his family still operationally involved. He talks us through how he’s planning to navigate the business through challenging times.
Family business · 22 Feb 2023
Riedel - Tasting the difference with the right wine glass
This 260-year-old Austrian family-owned company makes a wide range of differently shaped glasses which enhance the taste of the most popular grape varieties, according to an 11th generation descendant of the founder.
Family business · 22 Feb 2023
Riedel ― Tasting the difference with the right wine glass
This 260-year-old Austrian family-owned company makes a wide range of differently shaped glasses which enhance the taste of the most popular grape varieties, according to an 11th generation descendant of the founder.
Family business · 12 Dec 2022
Kvadrat ― Combining agility and a long-haul view to fuel success
Anders Byriel talks us through his approach to turbulence and explains how being a family business makes the Danish textile company more resilient.
Family business · 18 Oct 2022
How an entrepreneur broke the glass ceiling to take over and expand an Indonesian family business.
Shinta Widjaja Kamdani is owner and chief executive officer of Sintesa Group, an Indonesian conglomerate. She took over the company from her father in 1999 and has driven a focus on sustainability.
Family business · 26 Sep 2022
How a boutique Brazilian company is leading a ‘green steel’ revolution
Family business Grupo Ferroeste started as a raw materials firm back in the 1960s. Now Silvia Carvalho Nascimento is part of the next generation evolving the company to make sure it’s able to last another century.
Family business · 03 Aug 2022
A closer look at the pitfalls and opportunities of investing in family businesses
Family businesses are the cornerstone of the global economy.
Family business · 10 May 2022
The family-run golf company on course for generations of success
Robert J. Bettinardi set the sport on fire when he created his revolutionary one-piece milled putter. Now his son Sam is helping to push the company in new directions while maintaining the company’s byword of quality.
Family business · 24 Mar 2022
Federico de Majo on the power of innovation and his ‘brand before product’ approach to business
Glassmaking has been part of founder and CEO Federico de Majo’s family heritage for decades. But when he took over his father’s glass-making factory on the island of Murano, he chose not to build a business by leveraging the ‘made in Murano’ label. Instead, his glassware, homeware and lighting brand Zafferano is defined by his creations and equipped with the ability to evolve and innovate.
Family business · 03 Feb 2022
Carl Hansen & Son found success by trusting in quality and craftsmanship
One of the world’s most storied furniture manufacturers was in dire straits two decades ago, before its current owner and CEO pulled off a remarkable turnaround.
Family business · 24 Jan 2022
Expanding the family business
Apollonia Poilâne is the third generation of the Poilâne family to head what is now a globally renowned bakery business, but which continues to produce solely at its base in France, and at a satellite bakery in London.
Family business · 05 Jan 2022
Taking over the family boulangerie business
Apollonia Poilâne is the eldest daughter of the late architect Irena Poilâne and her husband Lionel Poilâne, who ran the family baking business for three decades, expanding it to a global brand. Apollonia has connected a new generation of consumer around the world with the renowned, rustic ‘miche Poilâne’ sourdough loaf.
Family business · 10 Nov 2021
Nachson Mimran on how family offices should drive change
Part of a prominent business family based in Switzerland and West Africa, Nachson Mimran believes family offices have a key role to play in pivoting the investment world towards sustainability.
Family business · 15 Sep 2021
Swiss inheritance law to be modernised
The way people in Switzerland lead their lives has undergone profound changes over the last one hundred years.
Family business · 17 Jun 2021
Taking over the family wine business
A descendant of Louis Roederer, Frédéric Rouzaud took over the family business that now owns the Louis Roederer and Deutz champagne houses, Château Pichon Lalande, Domaines Ott, Delas Frères, other fine-wine estates in California and Portugal, and a luxury hotel in the Alps, from his father in 2006.
Family business · 01 May 2020
The success of Gaja’s winery is built around tradition and innovation
As the fifth generation of the family prepares to take on the mantle of running the business, they’re looking to replicate their father’s willingness to always do things differently.
Resources to navigate family business challenges
With years of experience supporting families and family businesses, we provide a wealth of knowledge through our articles and research to guide them in navigating the complexities of governance, succession, and legacy planning.
