“At a time when much of the business conversation is defined by speed, scale and disruption, family businesses reflect a different model of success, one grounded in endurance, stewardship, resilience and trust,” says Byron Trott, the legendary chairman and co-CEO of merchant bank BDT & MSD Partners, in an essay for Forbes published Wednesday. “Their impact is often felt not only in revenues or valuations, but in livelihoods, institutions and the strength of local communities. That is why Forbes’ inaugural list of America’s top family businesses matters now,” says Trott, who has worked with companies founded and controlled by families with names like Koch, Pritzker, Mars and Cox.
There’s no doubt that America’s family businesses–including the 100 largest ones featured on Forbes’ new ranking–are what Trott calls “the quiet engine driving the economy.” They account for 25% of U.S. companies, 23% of the American workforce and 23% of private sector GDP, according to what four leading academics described in a recent paper as the “middle definition” of a family business.
Family businesses are everywhere around us. The ones on Forbes’ list own grocery stores where we shop (Wegmans), hotels where we stay (Hyatt), newspapers that keep us informed (The Wall Street Journal) and cosmetics that keep us looking our best (Estee Lauder). They make some of the most popular brands in product categories like candy (M&Ms), chicken (Perdue) and concrete (Quikrete). And they’re based all over the country, in 31 different states, ranging from Arizona to Wisconsin to North Carolina.
Many of them have overcome the odds and succeeded for three or more generations. That includes car rental giant Enterprise Mobility, which is now run by Chrissy Taylor, the granddaughter of founder Jack Taylor (d. 2016) and daughter of chairman and former CEO Andy Taylor. “The thing I wanted to pass along to the kids was that having a privately held family business is a privilege and you should treat it as such,” Andy Taylor told Forbes in 2024. “There are thousands of examples of businesses who haven’t done [generational transfer] well—who have crashed and burned or ultimately decided to go public. We tried to learn from those examples.”
Of the 100 family businesses on Forbes’ ranking, 67 are still privately owned, while 33 are publicly traded. The largest private family business by revenue is $154 billion food and agriculture giant Cargill, which is 88% owned by the descendants of founder William Wallace Cargill (d. 1909). The biggest public family business is $713 billion (sales) Walmart, whose late founder Sam Walton’s (d. 1992) heirs still control 44% of the company and have chaired its board since his death. In February, Walmart became the first brick and mortar retailer to boast a $1 trillion market cap.
The oldest business on Forbes’ list is Levi Strauss & Co., whose founding Haas family still owns 54% of the 174-year-old firm that invented blue jeans after taking it public for the second time in 2019. The youngest is Charlotte-based car retailer Sonic Automotive, which got its start in 1997–the same year it IPO’d–and is still 44% owned by the descendants of founder O. Bruton Smith (d. 2022), including son David Bruton Smith, the company’s chairman and CEO.
While it’s notoriously difficult to define what counts as a family business, and statistics vary based on how broad or narrow a definition is used, Forbes consulted with at least five family business experts including professors at such universities as Babson, Northwestern and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte to come up with our methodology. In compiling our ranking, Forbes excluded businesses with living founders, unless they cofounded the company with a late parent, like the Reyes brothers of food and beverage distributor Reyes Holdings. We made an exception to this rule in cases where the second generation has already taken over as chairman or CEO, like at Fox Corp, where Rupert Murdoch’s son Lachlan now serves in both roles.
Almost all of the private companies on Forbes’ list are more than 50% owned by their founding families, though we did include a few majority-employee-owned firms like Fidelity and Publix, where the founder’s heirs are estimated to own at least 20% and serve as executives or directors.
For public companies, we used a threshold of 10% family economic ownership, recommended by academics and other experts, combined with family board seats or C-suite roles. We also included companies like Ford and Comcast, where the family owns less than 10% of the company but controls at least 33% of the votes due to their super-voting shares and a family member serves as chair or CEO.
Forbes sourced information for the public companies on this list from securities filings. Many of the private companies shared data on their revenues and ownership, but others did not, and figures listed for the latter group are estimates based on Forbes reporting.
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