Over a 105-year span, the Ermírio de Moraes family built Votorantim, one of Latin America's largest industrial conglomerates, and among Brazil's topmost businesses, also credited for helping "build" the country over decades. By early 2023, Votorantim included diversified operations in 19 countries worldwide, with a net income above $1 billion. The conglomerate was privately owned by the Ermírio de Moraes family, with its ownership evenly split across four family branches. Over time, the family established a corporate governance structure with separate boards for ownership, business, and family affairs, leaving business operations to a professional management team. At the heart of this governance structure was the family board, viewed by many family members as the "glue and honey" bringing them together. Despite running multiple initiatives, Luciana Domit chair of the family board and a fifth-generation member, acknowledged, it was becoming increasingly hard to get its over 170 family members to spend time together and to engage in the activities they promoted. As the family enlarged and interests diverged, fostering its long-term unity could become more challenging. Were the family board's current strategies and overall governance structure at Votorantim conducive towards keeping the family united in its values and preserving its legacy? Or would a transformation be needed if the Ermírio de Moraeses were committed to remaining at the forefront of the Votorantim's governance structure?

This case explores the work of Ozyegin Social Investments, founded by Husnu Ozyegin , one of Turkey's most successful entrepreneurs. With a focus on education, health, gender equality, rural development, and disaster relief in Turkey, Ozyegin Social Investments and the Ozyegin family-Husnu, his wife, AyÅŸen, and their children, Murat and AyÅŸecan-have spent decades serving and improving communities in need. Their efforts led to the creation of one of Turkey's top universities, the establishment of schools and rehabilitation centers, post-earthquake humanitarian shelter and facilities, nationwide campaigns and an internationally recognized educational training initiative for young children, amongst other achievements. Students will learn how Ozyegin Social Investments represents a model of giving that has had a significant impact across multiple sectors of society and discuss how the legacy can be sustained in the future.

The Nuqul Group was established in 1952 by Elia Nuqul, a Palestinian refugee who fled his hometown in 1948 with his family to Jordan. He overcame many hardships in his initial years there, but subsequently started a trading business that grew to become one of Jordan's largest family businesses. Its flagship company, Fine Hygienic Holding (FHH), was a leader in hygienic paper products across the Middle East and North Africa. In March 2023, Ghassan Nuqul, a second-generation family member and chairman of FHH, was at a crossroads. Following his father's death in 2022, Ghassan and his three siblings decided to split the Group's assets among themselves so that each branch of the family could forge its own path. They were in discussions to finalize the details of the agreement. What would this mean for the future of the family? Would it make the family stronger, or would it weaken family ties?

The best time to have a difficult conversation is, ideally, as soon as possible. Engaging in challenging conversations early can produce beneficial results for several reasons, such as resolving issues, improving communication, preserving relationships, and increasing efficiency. This note includes best practices for difficult conversations, how to initiate conversations, steps for guiding the dialogue, methods for upholding intentions, and examples of difficult conversations.

This exercise examines three different family enterprise scenarios to open a conversation on what makes them successful. We look at how there is no strategy that fits all for family businesses, but there are strategies that can influence both the business and the family in positive ways in order to establish and cement legacies.

This case opens in June 2022, after Esas Group, one of Turkey's largest family-owned investment firms, implements a series of changes to professionalize the business and help transition family members from operators to responsible investors. In December 2019, the Group reorganized its structure. Measures were also taken to strengthen governance; for example, independent board members were brought in, and investment committees were formed. In January 2020, the founder, Şevket Sabancı, handed the chairmanship over to his son, Ali Sabancı. Şevket's daughter, Emine Sabancı Kamışlı, was still vice-chair of the Group, but she had stepped away from overseeing the company's day-to-day activities. By early 2022, Esas Group had a strong-performing product portfolio and it had started thinking about raising third-party capital. In June 2022, third-generation family member Fethi Kamışlı, who was heading Esas Ventures, received approval from the Esas Group's board of directors to move the venture capital business. Meanwhile, his cousin Kazım Köseoğlu, was pondering the future of the real estate business. He became managing partner and chairman of Esas Properties in late 2019 when the company hired a CEO to run the Turkish division of the real estate business. Can Köseoğlu and Kerem Kamışlı, two other members of the third generation, had become Esas Group board members, and both were living in London, each making their own private investments. As the younger generation was coming into wealth and managing their own choices, would the shareholders stay united and use Esas Group with the same level of commitment? What would the future of the holding company look like?

This case describes the leadership succession planning process at Cesaro e Associati (Studio Cesaro), founded in 1986 by Franco Cesaro in the northeastern Italian state of Veneto. In 2022, Franco was contemplating retirement and passing leadership of his firm, which consulted with other family-owned businesses, to his youngest daughter, Laura. For her part, Laura found much of her work at Studio Cesaro suited her, but she was still figuring out how her own ambitions fit with the firm's future. The case considers the perspectives of Studio Cesaro senior consultants and the Cesaro family-including Laura's mother, sisters, and husband-with a focus on Franco and Laura. Also included is information on Franco's philosophy and approach to family businesses, and descriptions of selected clients and services. The case concludes with Franco, Laura, and the family considering several options for the future equity allocation, governance structure, and business model of the firm.

Sylvia's Restaurant, approaching its sixtieth anniversary this August, is a testament to the values instilled by the matriarch herself, Sylvia Woods. Despite living through an era of racial oppression and poverty, Sylvia accessed financing and established her financial independence within the restaurant community in Harlem, NY. It was there she cultivated a community inside the walls that would eventually stand as Sylvia's. Ten years since her passing - amid business expansions, succession planning and a global pandemic - the legacy of Sylvia Woods continues to live on. The question now is: what should the next 60 years of Sylvia's look like?

Realizing in early 2021 that their pending real estate investment fund would likely be oversubscribed, Drake Real Estate Partners co-founders Nicolás Ibáñez and David Cotterman were considering how best to continue to diversify their investor base and how to optimize operational efficiency as they deployed increasing amounts of capital. Although his family office had funded the company's first fund, Ibáñez added Latin American family investors and some institutions to subsequent funds while Cotterman focused on delivering 20+% returns. As they looked ahead to their fourth fund and beyond, the partners needed to decide how best to develop their firm and their offerings as they worked to attract capital without alienating either their smart-money family investors or their nascent institutional clientele.

The case opens in August 2020 as Moulay Mhamed Elalamy (Mhamed), CEO of the Saham Group (the Group), a pan-African investment company that operates a variety of businesses out of Morocco, contemplates the Group's identity, its investment strategy, and how to navigate the existing businesses through volatility. Since Mhamed's father Moulay Hafid Elalamy (Moulay Hafid) had laid the foundations of the Group in 1995, its insurance arm became the largest insurance company in Morocco and expanded into the rest of Africa, and the Group diversified to include call centers, real estate, and agriculture. In 2013, Moulay Hafid Elalmy left his executive duties to take on the role of Minister of Industry, Trade, and New Technologies. The case talks about Mhamed's entering the family business at the age of 23 and his rise through the ranks to eventually assume the CEO position. In 2018, Mhamed decided to sell the insurance businesses, the Group's crown jewel, and the Group became a private equity house. Since then, Mhamed and his sister Anissa Elalamy were focused on making sure that business continued to prosper. While the Group was settling into its new identity as a family office focused on private equity, the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the difference between the father and son's risk appetite and management styles: Mhamed was focused on value preservation and risk-reward analysis, while Moulay Hafid's saw opportunities everywhere. This raised questions for the future and the family contemplated its risk tolerance and allocation, governance, and succession. The case introduces the different family members and executives and their points of view and asks: What difficult conversations did the Elalamys need to have to ensure shareholder value and continued success in the upcoming generations?

In 2010, Ken Talbot, a self-made Australian billionaire, was traveling throughout Africa to bring his innovative coal technology to the continent when he perished in a plane crash. His will was originally created years prior when his estate worth was estimated to be AU $130 million. At the time of his passing, however, his estate had grown over ten times to AU $1.3 billion and he hadn't yet finalized an updated will. His beneficiaries were unaware of both the existence of his will and his intentions, which led to significant legal battles and the devaluation of a number of his assets. What could have been done differently to prevent the legal nightmare and emotional distress that plagued his family and ensure his loved ones carried out his intentions?

For decades, Gera Developments (Gera) was a boutique family-owned real estate development firm in Pune, India. But since 2000, managing director Rohit Gera had turned the company into a dynamic innovator in housing solutions for urban Indian families. Over the 2010s, Gera had multiplied its area under development threefold; it had introduced its new ChildCentric vision of family housing villages (which incorporated children's academies in skills from swimming to singing into the real estate complex); and it had expanded its operations from Pune to the nearby state of Goa. Meanwhile, Rohit's brother Nikhil-a California resident-had invested company funds in several construction projects overseas in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 2020, the company stood at a crossroads. With Rohit beginning to envision the end of his managerial career, Gera had several key decisions to make: Should it double down on ChildCentric, introduce new age-differentiated offerings to serve its customers throughout their lives, or return to a more commoditized style of real estate development? To what extent should Gera cast in its lot with Nikhil's U.S. projects? Should the company consider other avenues for international expansion? And to whom would Rohit pass the torch of Gera's leadership-his daughter Diya, or an outside professional manager?

This supplemental case tracks the results of the Colman and Taubman-Dye class action suit against Theranos as well as Theranos' other legal challenges, and chronicles the final demise of the company in 2019.

Thermax is an engineering company in India that provides integrated solutions in energy, environment, and chemicals. The Aga family along with family trusts owns 62% of the company. Post a restructuring exercise in 2000, Thermax transforms itself from a small family business to a professionally managed $850 million conglomerate. Meher Pudumjee (family) is the current chairperson of the board. The case traces the journey of the company under the leadership of Meher's father, Rohinton Aga, who builds the business; her mother, Anu Aga, who restructures the company and professionalises it; and finally under Meher and the professional management team. In 2019, with the incumbent CEO scheduled to retire, Meher feels the company stands at a critical inflexion point and needs to rethink its strategy for the future. While historically Thermax has groomed people from within to take on leadership roles, she feels the next chapter of growth requires a completely fresh perspective and initiates a search for an external candidate. What qualities should the ideal candidate possess? How will this new incumbent integrate and extract loyalty as an outsider? Will the culture of the organization need to adapt in order to allow the new CEO to drive change?

This case describes how Ali Sabancı and his sister Emine Sabancı Kamışlı, shareholders of Esas Group, one of Turkey's largest family-owned investment firms, worked to grow and professionalize the business. While their father Şevket Sabancı, played an instrumental role in launching the group in 2000, he soon stepped back and let his children drive the business forward. In 2009, the first of the third generation of family members entered the business, prompting Ali and Emine to start putting formal processes in place for the onboarding and integration of the next generation. By 2019, the family office had several billion dollars of assets under management, diversified across various asset classes, both inside and outside Turkey. Emine's two sons had recently entered the business. Ali and Emine's biggest priority was establishing strong governance for the family office. They were taking several steps to professionalize the group and bring in more nonfamily members. Ali and Emine recognized that these actions would mean relinquishing certain privileges and freedom, somewhat shifting from their underlying ethos, which focused on protecting shareholders' individual rights. Shareholders had been offered liquidity and treated like customers, having the option to invest elsewhere if they so desired. To date, the family members had kept their capital within the group. Would this continue to be the case in the future? How could they keep the family together and make sure everyone was financially satisfied? How could they ensure to continue growing the net worth of their assets?

Module 1 of Demystifying Families in Business focuses on the Family. The Family unit forms the bedrock of the organizations that comprise the collective Family organization, specifically, the virtues that define the Family members' rules of engagement, and the Family governance structure necessary to support it. In this module note, we provide a framework for Legacy Governance, and introduce the Three Virtues of Family Business, (1) Clarity, (2) Fairness, and (3) Motivation, as requisite shared values for all Families in Business.

90% of the GDP in the world is created through family-owned businesses. Family businesses are frequently thought to be exclusively mom-and-pop, small businesses. Most fail to realize that Walmart, Fidelity, Cargill, Koch Industries, and Ford, to name a few, are all family-owned or controlled businesses. Family businesses can be private or public, sometimes with a dual-class stock structure. They can also be 100% family-owned or have outside investors. Family businesses come in all shapes and sizes, and they are here to stay globally, gaining power and influence by the day. In this module note, we provide an overview of the Demystifying the Family Enterprise Course course, which explores each of the three Family organizations, (1) Family, (2) Operating Company, (3) Family Office, as well as what it takes to create an enduring Family legacy.