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Global wealth transfer by geography, wealth band, horizon and source

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The failure-rate headline and what it actually means

The statement that “70 per cent of wealthy families lose control of their assets by the second generation and 90 per cent by the third” has become canonical in wealth-transfer literature. Its origins matter for intellectual honesty. The figure traces to John Ward’s 1987 study of a single cohort of 200 manufacturing family businesses in Illinois, which used as its sole criterion whether majority family ownership passed to the next generation. As James Grubman documents (2022), Ward found that roughly 30 per cent of these businesses survived through the second generation, 13 per cent into the third, and 3 per cent to the fourth. The popular “70 per cent fail by the second generation” headline is simply the inverse of that 30 per cent second-generation continuity rate, drawn from this one narrow, industry- and region-specific study and conflating business survival with family wealth transfer. A better-designed 2011 replication found essentially the opposite result (Grubman, 2022). The Williams Group’s research, conducted over 20 years and covering 3,250 families, is methodologically more rigorous. It confirmed that wealth erosion across generations is genuine and widespread, but located the cause not in investment incompetence or market risk, but in family governance, communication, and heir readiness. Recent research challenges even this benchmark. The Owner.One platform found an average loss rate of 34 per cent across 13,500 capital founders in 18 countries, substantially lower than the 70 per cent threshold (Owner.One, 2024). Yet whatever the precise headline figure, the underlying evidence is uncontested: families that do not establish deliberate governance structures, that do not communicate transparently about wealth and values, that do not invest in preparing the rising generation, and that do not select durable, long-horizon advisory relationships experience wealth loss and family fracture at rates materially higher than those that do. The Continuity Compact addresses these root causes directly.

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Bordier & Cie: 182 years of continuity

Bordier & Cie has its roots in a Geneva banking house established in 1844 and has carried the Bordier name since 1895. It has been owned and managed continuously by five generations of the Bordier family, the first of whom, Ami Bordier, became sole managing partner in 1895. Today, the bank is led by four managing partners, Grégoire Bordier (fifth generation), Evrard Bordier (fifth generation), Christian Skaanild (external, joined 2020), and Nicolas Porchet (external, joined 2019 and appointed a partner in September 2026), all of whom carry unlimited personal liability for the firm’s obligations. This hybrid family-plus-external governance model is deliberate: it combines family stewardship commitment with external professional discipline, addressing the succession challenge that defeats many family enterprises. Bordier is one of a small number of institutions in Switzerland that qualify as a “private banker” under the definition in the Swiss law. The designation carries a specific meaning: the managing partners pledge their unlimited personal wealth as collateral and are personally liable for the bank’s business obligations. This structure, SCmA (Société en Commandite par Actions) since 30 June 2020, has enabled Bordier to preserve unlimited partner liability while modernising its accounting and governance framework. The bank’s balance sheet reflects capital discipline: a Common Equity Tier 1 ratio of around 30 per cent, around three times the regulatory requirement, alongside a strong, debt-free balance sheet (Bordier & Cie, 2026). Five generations of continuous ownership, unlimited personal liability of managing partners, capital resilience demonstrably above regulatory minimums, and deliberate hybrid governance (family plus external talent) are the operational expressions of the Continuity Compact’s Govern and Endure principles. Bordier’s 182-year survival is not accidental. It reflects the compounding power of long-horizon governance, stable stewardship relationships, and institutional structures designed to outlast any single market cycle or generation.