Peugeot Invest, the investment company of the Peugeot family, ratified this week the family control of the group with the appointment of Edouard Peugeot as the next president of the board of directors following the holding of the General Meeting of Shareholders in May 2025.
The youngest son of the “G9”, as the heirs of the group whose automotive empire dates back to 1810 call themselves, is now the visible face of one of the most important industrial dynasties in France whose influence will be decisive within Stellantis to replace Carlos Tavares at the head of the company from 2026.
However, the Peugeot family is far from being the only one of its kind within the automotive sector, where many of the manufacturers that are still alive today were founded by dynasties that are still very present in the capital or management of automakers. the likes of Ferrari or Ford.
The power of the German family
In Germany, large families today still maintain control over a large part of the German automobile sector. The holding company Porsche SE, the largest shareholder of the Volkswagen group, owns 31.9% of the capital and 53.3% of the voting rights of the manufacturer, even ahead of the state of Lower Saxony (20% of the voting rights). vote) and Qatar (17%).
Among the 20 members of the supervisory board are four representatives of the family: Wolfgang Porsche and Hans Michel Piëch (82 years old), who are joined by Ferdinand-Oliver Porsche and Hans Dieter Pötsch, the chairman of the manufacturer’s board of directors.
At BMW, the Quandt family owns almost half of the manufacturer’s voting rights and the two heirs, Susanne Klatten and her brother Stefan Quandt, have been members of the board since 1997.
The Agnelli, the great Italian family
Through Exor, its investment holding company, the Italian Agnelli family is the largest shareholder of Stellantis with 14.2% of the capital, although in recent years they have diversified the portfolio into other sectors such as health or media, which has caused a distancing from the automobile sector.
One of Italy’s most powerful families, which forged an empire on Fiat decades ago, is now focused on technology and luxury, backing its investments on a kind of financial intelligence that has made way for Europe’s meager industrial power.
John Elkann, main heir of the saga and leader of Exor for more than ten years, is the president of Stellantis. Under the leadership of his grandfather, Gianni Agnelli, the acquisition of Ferrari, Lancia and Maserati was closed, making him one of the most influential figures in 20th century Italy.
The Ford family maintains its voting rights
In the case of Ford, the descendants of Henry Ford still control 40% of the voting rights on the manufacturer’s board, despite only holding 1.7% of the capital of the Detroit firm. Leverage, based on preferred shares issued during the IPO in 1956, is what has allowed the family to maintain control over the company in recent years.
Bill Ford, great-grandson of the founder and current president of the American company, has a quarter of the preferred shares in his portfolio. However, the company’s situation is not one of the best in its history from the point of view of market performance.
This past Wednesday, the North American firm announced a plan to adjust its operations in Europe that includes the dismissal of 4,000 workers over the next three years, most of them in Germany and the United Kingdom.
The Toyoda clan that controls Toyota
Asian motorists do not escape Western business structures either. Toyota, the largest automobile manufacturer in the world and one of the largest market capitalization, has very recently handed over the company’s baton to a lieutenant close to the Toyota family, Koji Sato, who until a year ago held the executive direction. .
However, Akio Toyoda continues to be present in the decisions of a company founded in the 1930s by his grandfather, Kiichiro Toyoda, who died in 1952 and is recognized as one of the greatest industrial entrepreneurs in the history of the country of the rising sun.
The one recognized as the last samurai of combustion cars, Akio Toyoda, maintains his position as chairman of the board of directors of Toyota Motor Corporation, although with an increasingly weaker voice in the face of growing pressure on shareholders and the Japanese government to reduce the group’s dependence on the country’s large families and corporations.
Tata’s Indian Empire
In 2012 in India, the leader of the Tata clan, Ratan Tata, at the head of the group since 1991, left his position as president of Tata Sons, a holding company that controls the subsidiaries of the business conglomerate, including the automobile company Tata Motors, to make way to Cyrus Mistry. The position is currently held by Natarajan Chandrasekaran.
Under the leadership of Ratan Tata, in 1998 the company presented to the world the first car manufactured entirely in the Asian country, the Tata Indica, and was responsible for the acquisition of Jaguar Land Rover from Ford in 2008 for approximately 2,207 million euros.
The manufacturer bought Jaguar in 1989 for 2.5 billion dollars (almost 2.4 billion euros) and, a year later, also acquired Land Rover for another 2.75 billion dollars (2.693 million euros). Furthermore, that same year, Tata Motors presented the Tata Nano, a car whose production cost was less than $2,000 (1,919 euros).
Last October, Ratan Tata died at the age of 86, leaving a void in the most internationalized Indian company. The Tata conglomerate, founded in 1868 by Ratan Tata’s great-grandfather, is currently made up of companies that cover various sectors such as energy, aviation, or car manufacturing, among others. As of today, the succession is not clear, although his relative Noel Tata is in the running to assume control of the holding company.
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