Henkel AG & Co. KGaA – Henkel headquarters in Düsseldorf

Most family enterprises begin with a shared story. Few survive once that story has to hold hundreds of shareholders. As families grow across generations, ownership often fragments. Informal trust weakens, decision-making slows, and internal divisions begin to shape outcomes more than strategy. Many families accept this as the inevitable price of longevity.

The Henkel family, owners of Henkel AG & Co. KGaA, followed a different path. Now in its fifth generation, with more than 160 family shareholders, the family has retained decisive control over a publicly listed global company. This case study looks at how this level of unity was achieved and held, even as the family continued to grow.

The Origin Story

The Henkel story begins long before questions of shareholder scale or governance discipline arose. In 1876, Fritz Henkel founded a small detergent business in Düsseldorf. His breakthrough came with Persil, the world’s first self-acting detergent, which significantly reduced the back-breaking labour of scrubbing clothes. From the outset, Henkel’s success rested not only on product innovation but also on a distinctive and distinctive approach to ownership.

In 1911, Fritz Henkel divided ownership among his three children. Whether motivated by fairness or pragmatism, the result was a structure that limited unilateral control and embedded coordination into the family’s ownership at an early stage. Assigning 40% each to his sons Fritz Jr. and Hugo, and 20% to his daughter Emmy, created the three family branches — later known internally as “tribes” — that continue to define the family’s ownership architecture today.

The 40:40:20 split introduced a lasting internal logic for decision-making.

  1. First, it prevented primogeniture by design. No single branch could dominate by default; authority would always require cooperation.
  2. Second, it normalised coalition-building early. Decisions could not be made unilaterally, making coordination across branches a structural necessity rather than a personal choice.
  3. Third, it acknowledged and formalised family plurality. Difference was recognised within the ownership structure itself, rather than being left to informal dynamics or individual influence.

As the company expanded through the early twentieth century, this foundational division quietly set the terms for everything that followed. Henkel grew into a major industrial enterprise, with the family’s internal order evolving alongside it — driven by a logic of the original structure.

Successions & Governance Changes

As Henkel grew from a family enterprise into a major industrial group, succession ceased to be a private matter and became a structural one. With each generation, the number of family shareholders increased, gradually exposing the limits of informal authority and personal leadership.

From Founder Control to Personal Authority

Following Fritz Henkel’s death in 1930, leadership passed to his son, Hugo Henkel. With his elder brother Fritz Jr. already deceased, Hugo was the family member best positioned to assume responsibility. He led the company through a period marked by economic depression, political upheaval, and war.

Governance during this era relied heavily on personal authority and direct control. This approach provided stability at a critical moment, but it was also inherently tied to the individual. As the third generation reached adulthood and the shareholder base expanded, it became increasingly clear that unity could no longer depend on a single figure. Scale demanded coordination rather than dominance.

The Governance Pivot

A defining moment came with the third generation. In 1961, Jost Henkel, who had led the company since 1938, died unexpectedly at the age of 51. Leadership passed to his younger brother, Konrad Henkel, a chemist by training and a pivotal figure in modernising Henkel’s governance.

Konrad recognised that global competition required access to capital and professional management beyond what a closed family structure could reliably provide. In 1985, he took the company public. Crucially, the IPO was designed to preserve family control through a dual-class share structure:

  • Preferred shares (non-voting) were issued to the public to raise capital.
  • Ordinary shares (voting) remained almost entirely in family hands.

This legal separation marked a decisive shift. Operational management was entrusted to non-family executives, while the family moved into a strictly supervisory role. Authority over strategy and leadership selection was retained, but execution was professionalised.

Holding the Centre

As the number of family shareholders surpassed 100, the central challenge shifted from business performance to social cohesion. At this stage, Albrecht Woeste, a great-grandson of the founder from the Emmy branch, emerged as a key stabilising figure.

Positioned outside the two dominant family lines, Woeste was widely perceived as a neutral coordinator rather than a representative of sectional interests. In a family of growing size and complexity, legitimacy mattered more than authority. His role was not to lead the business, but to preserve unity as governance became increasingly institutionalised.

Under his stewardship, the family completed the psychological transition away from executive control. Individual family members no longer expected operational roles, yet collectively retained decisive influence over the company’s future through formal governance bodies.

By the time the fifth generation assumed leadership roles, Henkel had already completed a fundamental shift: from personal authority to institutional structure. This transition proved essential as the scale of ownership continued to grow.

The Scientist at the Helm

Today, the public face of the Henkel family is Simone Bagel-Trah. Her appointment in 2009 marked a milestone not only for the family but for German industry, as she became the first woman to chair the supervisory board of a DAX-listed company.

Before assuming a leading governance role, Bagel-Trah established an independent professional identity. Trained as a microbiologist, she earned her PhD from the University of Bonn in 1998, worked as an external consultant, and founded her own research company, Antiinfectives Intelligence GmbH. She joined Henkel’s Supervisory Board in 2001 and the Shareholders’ Committee four years later.

In April 2008, Albrecht Woeste publicly signalled his intention to step back, allowing a clear and orderly transition. By the time Bagel-Trah was elected Chair of both the Supervisory Board and the Shareholders’ Committee in September 2009, the handover was expected and broadly supported.

She continues to serve in a dual governance role:

  1. Chair of the Supervisory Board, overseeing the management of the listed entity
  2. Chair of the Shareholders’ Committee, leading the family body that exercises voting control

Under her leadership, the family’s position is clearly defined. Day-to-day operations are fully delegated to non-family executives, while strategic oversight remains firmly in family hands. Through the share-pooling agreement, the family collectively controls approximately 61.8% of the voting rights, ensuring decisive influence without operational involvement.

At the same time, the sixth generation is being introduced to ownership through junior governance roles and youth committees. The transition from heir to steward begins long before voting rights are exercised.

The Four Abundances

Henkel’s long-term continuity becomes clearer when viewed through the lens of the Four Abundances: Wealth, Relationships, Time, and Purpose. The family’s success is not explained by financial performance alone, but by how these four dimensions has been deliberately balanced throughout their expansion.

Wealth

The Henkel family treats their shares not as liquid assets but as a “dynastic currency.” The core mechanism is the Share-Pooling Agreement (Aktienbindungskonsortium). In 2014, the family moved from a renewable fixed-term agreement to an indefinite extension. This acts as a deterrent against hostile takeovers or internal fragmentation. Family members cannot sell ordinary shares to outsiders without offering them to the family first, ensuring the voting block remains unbreakable.

Relationships

With over 160 shareholders, “family unity” is a structural challenge. The Henkels manage this by respecting the original 1911 division of the three “Tribes”: the Fritz, Hugo, and Emmy branches. The tribes debate issues privately within their branches before the Shareholders’ Committee meets. By the time they face the public or the management board, they adhere to a strict “one voice” policy, prioritising consensus over narrow majority wins.

Time

The greatest shift in the Henkel timeline was moving from “trusting the patriarch” (Gen 1-2) to “trusting the contract” (Gen 3-5). By codifying their rules into a legal constitution, they extended their time horizon. They don’t need to worry if the next generation gets along personally, because the governance structure forces professional cooperation regardless of personal affection.

Purpose

The family frames their ownership as a duty rather than an entitlement. They have successfully translated Fritz Henkel’s 19th-century focus on worker welfare into a modern ESG strategy. By positioning “sustainability” as a heritage value inherited from the founder, they engage the purpose-driven Gen Z members (Gen 6), giving them a reason to remain attached to the firm beyond just dividends.

Taken together, these four forms of abundance explain why Henkel’s governance has remained resilient as the family has grown. Wealth is protected through structure, relationships through process, time through preparation, and purpose through shared responsibility — a combination that few large family enterprises manage to sustain.

How the Canvas Could Have Helped

Henkel’s governance model is often presented as a finished architecture. In reality, it is the outcome of decades of adaptation and legal refinement. For many families, the challenge is not knowing where they want to end up, but how to move from understanding to structure before growth makes that transition painful. This is where tools such as the Family Council Canvas become particularly relevant.

Making implicit rules explicit

Much of Henkel’s success rests on clarity around who decides what — ownership, oversight, and management are not blurred. For other families, these boundaries often exist only as assumptions. The Canvas helps surface and formalise these distinctions early, reducing the risk of parallel decision-making or informal influence re-entering the system as the family grows.

Mapping scale before it arrives

Henkel’s structures were strengthened in anticipation of shareholder expansion, not after it became unmanageable. The Canvas allows families to visualise how their governance would function if shareholder numbers doubled or tripled. This shifts the conversation from “what works now” to “what will still work later,” a critical distinction for families transitioning from sibling to cousin ownership.

Normalising different forms of participation

One of Henkel’s strengths is that family engagement is not limited to leadership or control. The Canvas provides a framework for mapping multiple, legitimate roles — voting owners, committee members, observers, next-generation participants — without creating a hierarchy of worth. This makes disengagement less likely and reduces the pressure to compete for authority.

Designing off-ramps as a governance feature

Henkel’s long-standing practice of separating leadership from ownership did not emerge by accident. The Canvas helps families design off-ramps deliberately: when authority transfers, how influence changes, and where experience remains valuable without obstructing successors. This reframes stepping back as part of stewardship, not loss of status.

Creating a shared reference point for advisors and family

As families grow, governance conversations often fragment across legal, financial, and relational domains. The Canvas provides a common language that advisors, board members, and family stakeholders can work from. Instead of relying on personalities to hold alignment, the family relies on a visible, shared structure.

In the Henkel case, these elements evolved gradually through experience. For other families, the value of the Canvas lies in accelerating that learning — allowing structure to precede urgency, rather than being forced by it.

What the Case Teaches Family Offices

The Henkel case challenges a common assumption in family wealth: that cohesion depends primarily on shared values or strong leadership. At scale, goodwill alone is not enough.

Control does not require control of operations
 Henkel shows that stepping back from day-to-day management is often a sign of maturity, not loss. By separating ownership authority from operational execution, families can protect both performance and relationships.

Fairness is not the same as equality
 Henkel’s model does not promise equal influence to every shareholder. Instead, it offers equal legitimacy within a clearly defined system. Roles differ, but the rules apply to all.

Voting unity matters more than ownership equality
 What sustains long-term control is not that every cousin owns the same share, but that shareholders act as a single voting body. Strategic coherence depends on unity of voice, not uniformity of stake.

Governance must scale ahead of growth
Henkel strengthened its governance before shareholder numbers became unmanageable. Families that delay this work often find that urgency removes choice.

The critical question is this: would your current governance still function if your family tripled in size? If the answer is no, the Henkel model offers guidance for rethinking governance.

Closing Words

What makes the Henkel model enduring is not a single mechanism, but a consistent philosophy: ownership is a responsibility that must be organised to outlast individuals. Leadership changes, personalities shift, and generations expand, yet the framework continues to hold. In the end, continuity is rarely a matter of intention alone. It depends on whether families are willing to build structures that carry their legacy forward, even when those structures require difficult choices today.

Disclaimer: This article is a case study based on publicly available information and is intended for educational and informational purposes only. The analysis and opinions expressed are those of the author and do not constitute factual claims about the private lives or intentions of the individuals discussed. Images and excerpts from third-party sources are included solely for purposes of commentary and criticism, with attribution provided where sources are known.

References

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Henkel AG & Co. KGaA (2025) Articles of Association. Düsseldorf: Henkel AG & Co. KGaA.

Henkel AG & Co. KGaA (2026) Management & Corporate Boards. Available at: https://www.henkel.com/company/management-corporate-boards (Accessed: 5 February 2026).

IMD Business School (2013) Henkel: Shareholders with a Face. Case Study. Lausanne: International Institute for Management Development.

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Simons, R. and Kindred, N. (2012) Henkel: Building a Winning Culture. Case Study 112-060. Boston: Harvard Business School Publishing.