Dynasties, Fortunes and Misfortunes of the World's Great Family Businesses, by David S. Landes, is a good read. David S. Landes is professor emeritus of history and economics at Harvard. He also wrote The Wealth and Poverty of Nations.The book details the history of illustrious families such as:
- The Barings - The Rothschilds - The Morgans - Ford - The Agnellis and Fiat - Peugeot, Renault and Citroen - Toyoda (we know it as Toyota now) - The Rockefellers - The Guggenheims - The Schlumberger - The Wendel These are names we recognise as those of multi-national corporations. They all started as family businesses. My interest in this book arose from my interest in parenting. Quite often, I coach highly accomplished parents whose children are not reaching potential. The parents may be medical doctors, accountants, lawyers and CEO founders. Their children, whilst having inherited their parents' IQ, nonetheless, do not seem to fulfil their potential. Again and again the Chinese saying returns to haunt me: 富不过三代 Wealth does not pass 3 generations. It is not my nature to be fatalistic. I did not want to accept this as an universal truth. For parents, the most heartrending tragedy must be to grow old and see one's children be losers and wastrels. Don't all of us send our kids to tuition, and sit with them to do homework just to ensure that they are best positioned to be better than we are? When I was a young mother in my 30s, my worst fears were that my children grow up spendthrift, entitled, reliant on me. I badly wanted my children to surpass me and my husband. It struck me that Italian families and French families were often able to ensure that wealth pass down to even the 7th and 8th generation. The Rockefeller family is now in its SEVENTH generation, with as many as 170 heirs. They still hold substantial wealth. In 1523, Battista Suardi was a powerful man in the region of Bergamo, Italy. The family still has considerable wealth and influence today. Clearly, these families were able to raise capable children generation after generation. I wondered what it is about European parenting practices that allowed them to do so, when Chinese families seemed to fatalistically accept that: 财富不传三代 Wealth does not pass 3 generations. Click HERE for the next post in this series.
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Petunia Lee, Ph.D Archives
January 2022
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