Relatively successful

By The Economist

The world's biggest family-controlled firms

THE “Lucky Sperm Club”, as Warren Buffett likes to call it, is still going strong at the commanding heights of global business. Family-controlled firms now make up 19% of the companies in the Fortune Global 500, which tracks the world’s largest firms by sales. That is up from 15% in 2005, according to new research by McKinsey, a consulting firm, which defines such firms as ones whose founders or their families have the biggest stake, of at least 18%, plus the power to appoint the chief executive.

Heading up the league table of the largest family firms by revenue is Walmart, the biggest retailer in the world, which is still controlled by the family of Sam Walton, the man who originally founded the chain's first store in Arkansas in 1962. Yet it is not simply firms from America that dominate this particular ranking. Of the top ten, only four are based in the United States, with firms from Britain, Germany, Italy, Russia, South Korea and Taiwan also represented.