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J. C. Jacobsen
Born
The brewer behind Carlsberg created the Carlsberg Foundation in 1876 to fund science, and on his death in 1887 the brewery passed to it. Today the foundation holds a majority of the voting rights in Carlsberg A/S, with a smaller share of the capital, and uses its dividends to fund Danish research and culture. The Carlsberg Laboratory it supported is where the pH scale was devised.
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Ernst Abbe
Born
After Carl Zeiss's death, his partner Abbe set up the Carl Zeiss Foundation in 1889 and transferred his own shares to it in 1891, so that the optical works and the Schott glassworks belonged to no individual. The foundation statute he wrote guaranteed workers pensions, sick pay and later an eight-hour day. The foundation still owns both companies outright, which makes it one of the purest examples of the model.
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Milton S. Hershey
Born
Childless, Hershey and his wife Catherine founded a school for orphan boys in 1909, and in 1918 he transferred most of his fortune, including his controlling stake in the chocolate company, to the Hershey Trust to fund it. The trust still holds a majority of the company's votes for the Milton Hershey School. When the trustees tried to sell the company in 2002, the state attorney general and a public outcry stopped them.
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Robert Bosch
Bosch's will of 1938 asked that his company be kept independent and its profits used for charitable purposes. In 1964 the Robert Bosch Stiftung acquired the shares. The structure separates money from power: the foundation receives about nine-tenths of the dividends but has no votes, while a separate trust company holds almost all the voting rights. That split has kept the company independent and private for decades.
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Will Keith Kellogg
Born
Kellogg founded the W. K. Kellogg Foundation in 1930 and over the following years gave it most of his Kellogg Company shares, which made it for decades the company's largest shareholder. A separate trust now holds the stock for the foundation, which focuses on children and families, especially in Michigan. It has gradually reduced its stake to diversify, so the link to the cereal business is weaker than it once was.
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Henry Wellcome
Born
Wellcome, co-founder of the drug company Burroughs Wellcome, left the entire share capital to trustees in his will on his death in 1936, with the profits to fund medical research. The Wellcome Trust sold its stake in the company in stages from 1986, and the business became part of Glaxo. That sale turned the trust into one of the world's largest research funders with a diversified endowment rather than a company owner.
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Dorabji Tata
Born
Jamsetji Tata's elder son placed his shares in Tata Sons, along with his wife's jewels, in the Sir Dorabji Tata Trust shortly before his death in 1932, following his brother Ratan's trust. Together the Tata trusts own about two-thirds of Tata Sons, the group's holding company, and fund hospitals, research institutes and education. Disputes among the trustees in 2025 showed how much influence over the group sits in the trusts' boardrooms.
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Hans Wilsdorf
Born
Wilsdorf had no children, and after his wife's death in 1944 he created the Hans Wilsdorf Foundation in Geneva and left it his shares in Rolex. The foundation still owns the company outright, keeping it private and immune to takeover, and gives large sums to Geneva charities, education and social housing. It publishes little, so outsiders know less about how the money is used than they would for most public charities.
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Robert Wood Johnson II
Born
The son of a Johnson & Johnson co-founder, Robert Wood Johnson II ran the company for decades and left nearly all of his J&J shares to the foundation that bears his name when he died in 1968. Since 1972 the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has been one of America's biggest health charities. It diversified away from J&J stock over time, so it now has no controlling relationship with the company.
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Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach
Born
Alfried Krupp was convicted at Nuremberg for the use of slave labour and released early. Before his death in 1967 he arranged for the family firm to become a company owned by the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach Foundation, with his son renouncing his inheritance. The foundation remains the largest single shareholder in thyssenkrupp, and the firm's long difficulties have weighed on its income and its influence.
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Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller
Born
His father, A. P. Møller, set up the foundation in 1953, and Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller, who ran the shipping group for decades, chaired it and placed the family's control there. Through A. P. Møller Holding, the foundation holds the controlling votes in A.P. Møller-Maersk while the family remains on the board. It funds Danish culture and education, including the Copenhagen Opera House it gave the state in 2005.
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Reinhard Mohn
Mohn rebuilt the Bertelsmann publishing house after the war and in 1977 set up the Bertelsmann Stiftung, transferring the majority of the company's capital to it in 1993, largely to avoid inheritance tax breaking up the group. Voting control sits with a family-dominated management company rather than the foundation, and critics argue the foundation acts as an influential policy think tank funded by untaxed company profits.
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Ingvar Kamprad
Born
Kamprad split IKEA in the 1980s: the stores went to INGKA Holding, owned by the Stichting INGKA Foundation in the Netherlands, nominally a charity supporting architecture and design, while the brand and concept went to Inter IKEA, ultimately controlled by a Liechtenstein foundation. Investigations by journalists and the European Parliament argued the structure mainly kept the business intact and cut tax. It shows a foundation can serve control as much as charity.
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Yvon Chouinard
Born
In 2022 Chouinard and his family gave away Patagonia: the 2 per cent of shares carrying the votes went to the Patagonia Purpose Trust, which the family steers, and the other 98 per cent, with the economic rights, to the Holdfast Collective, a non-profit that spends profits not reinvested on climate and nature work. Because Holdfast is not a charity, it can fund political campaigns, and the family paid gift tax rather than claiming deductions.
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