List of wealthiest families
Various lists of the richest families (excluding royal families or autocratic ruling dynasties) are published internationally, by Forbes[1][2] as well as other business magazines.
There is a distinction between wealth held by identifiable individual billionaires or a "nuclear family" and the wider notion of an extended family or a historical "dynasty," where the wealth of a historically family-owned company or business has become distributed between various branches of descendants,[3] usually throughout decades, ranging from several individuals to hundreds of offspring. According to Bloomberg, the world's 25 richest families control more than $1.4 trillion (1,400,000,000,000) of wealth.[4]
Contemporary rankings
Note: The list includes families who, according to reliable sources, have a combined net worth of 5 billion US dollars and above.
Historical
Excluding royal dynasties and land-owning aristocracy, the wealthiest families since the emergence of banking and early capitalism in the Italian Renaissance were:[citation needed]
- The Rothschild family of bankers became the richest family in the mid-19th century.[72] The family's accumulated wealth has been divided among many descendants, only one of which (Benjamin de Rothschild) was officially recognized as a billionaire. Determining the family's exact wealth has been deemed implausible;[73] conspiracy theories claiming the family is worth trillions of dollars have not been proven.[74][75]
- The Bardi family of Florence (14th century)
- The Medici family, as owners of the Medici Bank, the richest family in 15th-century Europe.[76]
- The Gondi family of Florence, financial partners of the Medici family in the 15th century.
- The Fugger family of mercantile bankers and venture capitalists, the richest family in the 16th century.[77]
- The Welser family, alongside the Fugger one of the most important families of merchant bankers in 16th-century Europe.
- The Baring family, owners of an important merchant bank in London in the 18th to 19th centuries.
- The Schröder family, a leading Hanseatic family of Hamburg in the 18th to 19th centuries.
- The Goldman–Sachs family, owners of the Goldman Sachs investment bank from 1869 to 1912.[78]
- The Venetian noble houses, notably the Contarini, Cornaro, Dandolo, Riario, Giustinian, Loredan, Mocenigo, and Morosini families, monopolised pre-modern trade while ruling the Venetian Republic as a mercantile oligarchy.[79]
Notes
- ^ The $136 billion in assets include charitable foundations and other investment vehicles which are not owned by individual shareholders but still retain successive management.
- ^ Approximately euro to dollar conversion rate as of September 2018[24]
- ^ In March 2017, Tharawat Magazine reported that approximately one thousand family members co-own the holding company Association Familiale Mulliez.[31]
- ^ The $32 billion in assets include charitable foundations and other investment vehicles which are not owned by individual shareholders but still retain successive management.
- ^ Approximately euro to dollar conversion rate as of September 2019
References
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{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ The Scudder Family, John Pitman, Chandrani Ghosh, David Armstrong, The Dynasties, Forbes, 28 February 2002. "The names are famous and often synonymous with great brands, from spaghetti to tires; those who bear them are without question fabulously wealthy. Yet the Rothschilds, Rockefellers, Michelins and 47 other billionaire families don't appear on the Forbes World's Richest People list. Why not? It's a question of degrees. We have tried to distinguish between fortunes that belong to individuals or nuclear families, and those that have been passed down through more than one branch of the family tree and are often shared by dozens of heirs."
- ^ a b c d e f g h i "The World's Wealthiest Family Gets $4 Million Richer Every Hour". Bloomberg. 1 August 2020. Retrieved 11 August 2019.
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- ^ Niall Ferguson, The Ascent of Money (2008), p. 88: "Between 1818 and 1852, the combined capital of the five Rothschild 'houses' (Frankfurt, London, Naples, Paris and Vienna) rose from £1.8 million to £9.5 million. As early as 1825 their combined capital was nine times greater than that of Baring Brothers and the Banque de France. By 1899, at £41 million, it exceeded the capital of the five biggest German joint-stock banks put together."
- ^ "The Rothschilds’ family fortune", Financial Times, 25 March 2010
- ^ Putterman, Samantha (9 January 2019). "Meme way off in claim that the Rothschild family holds '80 percent of the world's wealth'". PolitiFact.
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- ^ de Roover, Raymond Adrien (1966), The rise and decline of the Medici Bank: 1397–1494, New York City; Toronto: W. W. Norton; George J. McLeod Limited (respectively), LCCN 63-11417
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- ^ The company admitted the first partner who was not a family member in 1912, and Henry Goldman resigned in 1917. William D. Cohan, Money and Power: How Goldman Sachs Came to Rule the World (2012).
- ^ Winters, Jeffrey A. (2011). Oligarchy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 128. ISBN 9781139495646.
External links
- Gauri Bhatia, Here's how India's wealthiest families are seeking to stay wealthy, CNBC, 18 October 2017
- Simone Foxman, World's Richest Families Seeking to Make More Deals on Their Own, Bloomberg, 9 November
- The T&C 50: The Richest Families You've Never Heard Of, Town & Country, 17 October 2017,
- Kerry A. Dolan and Luisa Kroll, "Billionaire Dynasties", Forbes, 21 June 2001
- Devon Pendleton, Bloomberg, Europe's richest royal gets richer as family bank lures wealthy, The Register Citizen, 28 October 2017
- Tom Metcalf and Jack Witzig, World's Wealthiest Became $1 Trillion Richer in 2017, Bloomberg News, 27 December 2017
- Kimberley Richards, 87 richest families in Canada have 4,000 times more wealth than average family, report says, Independent, 1 August 2018