List of wealthiest families: Difference between revisions

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The following is a collection of published estimates of the wealth of families of industrialists or financiers (not including royal families or autocratic ruling dynasties). Notably, Forbes has published a compendium of "America's Richest Families" since 2014.^[1] As of the 2015 list, only three families are listed as wealthier than the net worth of the richest individual (Bill Gates at 79 billion USD): the Walton family (USD 149 billion), the Koch family (USD 86 billion) and the Mars family (USD 80 billion). The Rothschild family of bankers might be the world's richest family, accumulating wealth since their rise in the 19th century; there have been attempts to estimate the Rothschild wealth, figures ranging from US$1.5 (Forbes) to US$400 billion.^{[citation needed]} Forbes distinguishes between wealth held by an identifiable "nuclear family" and the wider notion of a historical "dynasty", where the wealth of a historically family-owned company has become distributed between various branches of descendants.^[2]

Excluding royal dynasties and land-owning aristocracy, the wealthiest families since the emergence of banking and early capitalism in the Italian Renaissance were:

• The Bardi family of Florence (14th century)
• The Medici family, as owners of the Medici Bank, the richest family in 15th-century Europe.^[22]
• The Gondi family of Florence, financial partners of the Medici family in the 15th century.
• The Fugger family of mercantile bankers and venture capitalists was among the richest family in the 16th century.^[23]
• The Welser family, alongside the Fugger one of the most important families of merchant bankers in 16th-century Europe.
• The Baring family, owners of an important merchant bank in London in the 18th to 19th centuries.
• The Schröder family, a leading Hanseatic family of Hamburg in the 18th to 19th centuries.
• The Rothschild family of bankers became the richest family in the mid 19th century.^[24]
• The Goldman–Sachs family, owners of the Goldman Sachs investment bank from 1869 to 1912.^[25]

• List of wealthiest historical figures
• List of cities by number of billionaires
• List of countries by the number of US dollar billionaires
• List of the richest royals
• List of wealthiest animals
• List of wealthiest organizations