Word: stakes
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...leadership, Serono has shifted its focus from pharmaceuticals to biotechnology and almost doubled its revenues to $1.5 billion in 2002, making it the world's third largest biotech company after Amgen and Genentech. "My father created a platform, and I launched myself from it," says Bertarelli, now 37. The stake he holds together with his mother and sister is worth about $4.4 billion, placing the Bertarellis among Europe's wealthiest families--and providing Ernesto with more than enough to fund his sailing ambitions. Just last month, he and his crew won their sport's greatest prize, the America...
...some of the most established and successful family firms, the heirs have switched from an active-management to a passive-investor role. Consider Liliane Bettencourt, 80, who manages her family's $11 billion stake in L'Oreal cosmetics--founded by her father in 1907--through a holding company. She and her daughter Francoise, 49, sit on the L'Oreal board, but no other family member works at the firm. When Freddie Heineken died last year, control of his brewing colossus passed to his daughter and sole heir, Charlene de Carvalho Heineken, 48. She lives in London with her banker husband...
...entire capitalization of the Swedish stock exchange. (Even the exchange is part of a company that the Wallenbergs control.) Investor AB, the family's industrial holding company, dates from 1916. It faced an unprecedented attack two years ago, when Swiss financier Martin Ebner built up a 10% stake and called for Investor to be broken up in the name of improving shareholder value. Ebner, overstretched financially, has since had to sell or reduce many of his holdings, including his stake in Investor. The episode was a harsh test for the latest Wallenberg generation (the fifth) to run the business...
...Family's Stake: $3.25 billion...
...investor role isn't always passive; sometimes it can be passive-aggressive, as the Quandt family has demonstrated. Herbert Quandt acquired a controlling stake in automaker BMW in 1959, when it was in dire straits. His heirs today own 47% of BMW's stock. The children of Quandt's third marriage, Stefan, 36, and Susanne, 40, sit on BMW's supervisory board. In 1999, angered by continuing losses at the automaker's Rover subsidiary in Britain, they ousted CEO Bernd Pischetsrieder in a boardroom coup. In Hamburg, the fate of Beiersdorf (Nivea skin cream) has been uncertain for months because...