Billionaires Are Fighting Their Heirs For Control Beyond The Grave
Pierre Castel began planning for succession more than three decades ago. The French billionaire, founder of one of the world’s largest drinks empires, consolidated ownership of his business in a company in Gibraltar, then created a foundation in Liechtenstein, before finally setting up a trust in Singapore.
Castel built his eponymous conglomerate from a tiny wine and fresh produce operation around Bordeaux in the 1940s into an international company worth some $10 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. It spans breweries, soft drinks producers and plantations across Africa and had €6.5 billion ($7.59 billion) in annual sales. The succession process was supposed to shield that business from tax, and prevent a family conflict after his death. At the age of 99, it’s now coming back to haunt him.
Earlier this year, Castel’s daughter and one of his nephews tried to unseat the CEO that the family patriarch picked to oversee the group. The dispute has reached Singapore’s Supreme Court, and could go to trial later this year.
The tussle over the future of the empire is just the latest in a series of disputes between billionaire businesspeople and their potential heirs, centered on the use of trusts, legal entities that are often used to hold assets and transfer wealth. But as recent high-profile family feuds—including News Corp. founder Rupert Murdoch’s court battle with his children—have shown, they can also be used by their founders to impose conditions on the next generation.
These wranglings over trusts have consequences far beyond the families behind the feuds, given the size of the companies and the amount of money that’s poised to change hands. The world’s 500 biggest family businesses generated $8.8 trillion in 2024, meaning that potentially destabilizing battles over control can reverberate through the economy. At the same time, a great intergenerational wealth transfer is gathering pace, with an estimated $83 trillion in assets expected to be passed down around the world over the next two decades.
An Iron Fist
Pierre Castel was said to run his sprawling empire with an iron fist, retaining a tight grip well into his nineties. The son of Spanish immigrants who left school at the age of 11 to work in a Bordeaux vineyard with his father, Castel largely eschewed the yachts and luxuries of the billionaire lifestyle, and often relied on a handshake to seal deals.
Castel moved to Switzerland in 1981, after France elected the Socialist President Francois Mitterrand, who promised to raise taxes on the rich.
The Castel Group is still in some ways a family affair. Pierre’s nephew, Alain Castel, heads the company’s wine arm, which is still based near Bordeaux. Alain and his brother Philippe helped build up the largely French operations over decades. A different branch of the family headed by another of Pierre’s nephews, Michel Palu, focused on the African beer business.
In 2008, Castel created a so-called discretionary and irrevocable trust in Singapore.
Administered by trustees, SG Trust (Asia) Ltd. controls the Castel Group through two Singapore-based entities—Investment Beverage Business Fund and Cassiopee Ptd. Ltd.—and D.F. Holding in Luxembourg. D.F. Holding consolidates earnings from the sprawling Castel conglomerate, made up of more than 150 subsidiaries. Another Singapore-based entity, Investment Beverage Business Management, or IBBM, handles the distribution of dividends to the extended clan—five branches of the family descending from Castel and four siblings.
The spirit of the trust ostensibly reflects the founder’s desire for the drinks conglomerate to remain closely held and continue to grow through the reinvestment of proceeds. Castel didn’t want anyone from the second-generation to gain real power over the entire empire, and in recent years reiterated that no new family members were to become directors or company executives.
Castel’s reticence over mixing his family and his business legacies first came to light in a court ruling in Switzerland. The billionaire lost a protracted dispute with Swiss tax authorities in 2022, and was forced to pay out around 400 million Swiss francs ($509 million). His defense, led by tax lawyer Gregory Clerc, argued that Castel had removed himself from the business, first through a Liechtenstein foundation and then the Singapore trust, as a way to prevent future family infighting.
In 2023, Pierre chose Clerc as CEO of the Castel Group. Clerc has seats on the board of D.F. Holding, Cassiopee and IBBM as well as more than two dozen other companies within the group, which employs some 43,000 people across 35 countries.
Alain Castel was also on the boards of D.F. Holding and Cassiopee until December, but was removed by the trustees, who have not given an official reason for his dismissal. He still heads the group’s wine business.
After being ousted, Alain publicly questioned the CEO’s strategic vision and ability to effectively run the group. At the time, Castel Group rejected Alain’s claim, and said that Clerc was focused on developing the company.
Alain then teamed up with Pierre’s only child, Romy, 52, to try to push Clerc out. Romy—who has never held a major operational role at the company—told Bloomberg News in December that the CEO had amassed too much power and was “attempting to take control.”
Having failed to remove Clerc and chairman Pierre Baer from the board of IBBM through shareholder meetings and votes, the dispute has ended up in court in Singapore.
The case is complicated and hinges on a question over the balance of power between IBBM and the trustee of the overarching trust. Romy and Alain believe that permanently removing Clerc and Baer from the board of IBBM would be a first step towards replacing Clerc as CEO of Castel and exerting more family control over the group.
The other side disagrees with this interpretation. In an email to Bloomberg before the court case, Baer said that Clerc’s role at Cassiopee—which is owned by IBBF, and hence governed by the trust—doesn’t depend on his position at IBBM. “It is expected that he will remain in his position so long as the licensed and regulated trustee determines that he remains capable and competent to do so,” Baer wrote.
In the meantime, an order prevents Clerc and Baer from acting in their director roles at IBBM.
Trusts With Immense Sway
When a founder transfers ownership to a trust, particularly an irrevocable or non-reversible trust, the trust documents and the trustee appointed to enforce them have immense sway over how heirs benefit from the family business. A trust can effectively dictate that family members receive dividends but limit them from holding voting shares or having management roles, for example. Sometimes founders achieve this by separating economic ownership of an asset—what the children ostensibly stand to inherit—from control.
A founder intent on curbing family involvement may want to counter perceived nepotism or be trying to equalize obligations among heirs, some who are likely better equipped than others to have management roles. Warren Buffett, a vocal proponent of meritocracy, has regularly spoken out against dynastic corporate leadership.
Morten Bennedsen, a professor at the University of Copenhagen and an expert on family businesses, said the use of family and corporate trusts is on the rise because “just letting the next generation figure it out is high risk.”
Succession planning for the ultra-wealthy has become more complex over the years, with blended families—often the result of remarriages—and the globalization of businesses that has left clans straddling international borders, according to a survey by the London-based Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners, or STEP, an association of lawyers, accountants and wealth advisers.
Industry experts say other leading causes of disagreement around trusts include breakdowns in family relations, a lack of confidence in the younger generations’ ability to manage money and, even more fundamentally, differing viewpoints on the purpose of inheritance.
“The old-fashioned way of wealth planning was top down without any discussion,” said Matt Braithwaite, a partner at Wedlake Bell in London and specialist in succession and estate planning. “Imposing structures on next generations can lead to immediate conflict and a sense of distrust.”
Braithwaite said that to avoid conflicts, families need to talk and make sure that all of the stakeholders really understand what is being laid out in the trust agreements. But the need for that kind of slow, bespoke process goes against a broader industry trend towards more standardized trust structures, which are modelled on a more one-size-fits-all approach, he said.
“Imposing structures on next generations can lead to immediate conflict and a sense of distrust.”
Finding willing and qualified trustees within or close to the family is also hard, given the complexities and emotionally charged nature of the job. Trust experts say the shortage is poised to become far more acute in the coming years as more trusts are created to steward wealth being handed down.
The impact of trust quagmires extends well beyond the lives of the ultra-wealthy. Family businesses of all sizes account for some 70% of global GDP and about 60% of the world’s jobs, according to a 2024 McKinsey study. Research shows that family businesses tend to be more embedded in their communities, and take a more long-term, purpose-driven approach to capitalism. Family clashes and bungled successions frequently result in operating businesses being sold, often to private equity or larger corporations that are by default more transactional in nature.
For more information see Devon Pendleton, Cindy Wang, & Tara Patel “Billionaires Are Fighting Their Heirs For Control Beyond The Grave” Financial Advisor, June 10 2026.