The Berlusconi succession shows how management, ownership and control can pass between generations on different timelines within a family enterprise.

The Lululemon story shows how a founder can leave management while remaining economically and strategically connected to the company he created.

What happens to family ownership as professional executives assume greater responsibility for the business? Our latest case study follows the Fleming family across five generations, from Robert Fleming’s first investment trust to international banking, dispersed family ownership, the sale to Chase Manhattan, and the development of a family office into an international wealth management business.

The Rong family's history reveals an unusual form of continuity. Through three generations of family leadership, the basis of family authority repeatedly changed: from private industrial ownership, to political and institutional influence, to substantial minority ownership combined with managerial autonomy, and eventually to private family wealth outside the enterprise.

Most family businesses prepare successors to preserve what the founder built. The Dyson family pursued a more ambitious objective. As the enterprise expanded from a single engineering company into a global technology business, agricultural holdings and educational institutions, the central question became how an entrepreneurial culture could outlive its founder.

From a trading business, Kwok Tak-seng built Sun Hung Kai Properties into one of Hong Kong's largest property developers, combining long-term ownership with developments that became closely linked to the city's expanding transport infrastructure and urban growth.

Despite sharing the famous surname, Sir David and Sir Frederick Barclay were unrelated to the Barclays banking family. They built their fortune independently, beginning with a small building and decorating business in London. Over the following five decades, they transformed it into one of Britain’s largest privately owned business empires, spanning premium media, retail, luxury hospitality and real estate. Their portfolio eventually included Telegraph Media Group, The Very Group, The Ritz London, and a network of holding companies and offshore trusts.

For many business families, succession is treated as the moment when leadership changes hands. The Li family approached it differently. Years before Li Ka-shing retired, the foundations of the next generation's governance were established …

Few family enterprises illustrate the long-term consequences of succession design as clearly as Reliance Industries. Built by Dhirubhai Ambani from a small trading operation into one of the world's largest integrated conglomerates, Reliance became …

The Rockefeller saga began with a young bookkeeper in Cleveland who developed a reputation for precision, discipline, and unusual attention to capital allocation. John D. Rockefeller Sr. was not born into inherited wealth. His …