Who has not thought about what it feels like to be a millionaire? To be the owner of huge emporiums and lead a comfortable life. It sounds attractive to many, but like everything in life, being a millionaire doesn’t mean that you’re free of problems and drama, especially if you’re running a family business. Proof of this is Succession, the HBO series that follows the story of the Roys, a family that owns a great entertainment emporium and shows how far they can go to seize all the wealth. Even if it’s a fictional series, the truth is that it was based on real millionaire families with their good dose of drama and scandals.
The Murdoch family, owners of Fox
Let’s start the list with the family that has the most similarities to the Roys, at least in terms of structure. They are the Murdochs, former owners of 21th Century Fox before it was sold to Disney, and whose members are still at the forefront of major media outlets.
To begin with, there is the father, Rupert Murdoch, who at the age of 90 hoards a “modest” sum of 19 billion dollars. Although he no longer owns Fox in its whole, he is still the executive director of Fox News, from which the newspapers The Sun and The Times come out, as well as the television networks of Fox and Sky.
But what would a true tycoon be without his heirs? Rupert’s children are also at the head of their empires: James is the co-chair of 21st Century Fox. Lachlan is the CEO of Nova Entertainment. His daughter, Elisabeth, decided to go to the UK, where she serves as a media executive, while Prudence does the same in Australia.
Incredibly, a single-family has so much power without being full of drama or internal fights. Maybe they just haven’t been made public, and no one knows what’s going on behind the scenes. Nothing to do with other families on the list.
The Redstones
If Succession drew inspiration from a family to portray the dramas that money provokes, it was undoubtedly the Redstones, people with strong influences on media such as CBS and Viacom. Does MTV or Nickelodeon sound familiar to you?
For starters, there is the legal fight between Sumner Redstone, the patriarch of the family, and his daughter, Shari Redstone, known to many as the corporate battle of the century.
It all started in 2015, when Shari sued CBS, alleging that the company was trying to take away control from her, and the fights escalated to such a level that she faced her own father.
For his part, Summer did not plan to leave control of the companies to Shari at all, even going so far as to declare that she did not have the business judgment or skills to be president. It is amazing to see a father refer to his daughter in this way.
After multiple arguments, fights, lawsuits, and even a letter to Forbes in which Sumner strongly criticized his daughter, the jury appealed in favor of Shari in 2019, granting her the presidency of CBS and Viacom. One would believe that the fight would continue even after the official decision, but by chance of fate, Sumner passed away in 2020, sealing this chapter of the Redstone family.
Even though Shari’s case was the most mediatic, curiously she wasn’t the only one of Sumner’s children to sue him. In 2006, Brent Redstone also took his father to court for excluding him from important positions in his companies. He sadly did not have the same success as his sister, and he decided to leave the company with 240 million dollars.
The Hearst
Let’s talk about an older family, one that lived through the Great Depression and overcame it. To this day, they’re as powerful as in its glory days: the Hearst, heads of Hearst Communications, which is in charge of Harper’s Bazaar, Cosmopolitan, Elle, and many other media.
The man who started it all was William Randolph Hearst, one of the few men who came out on top during the Great Depression, making up to 28 newspapers nationwide in the prime of his company. Although he passed away in 1951, generation after generation of Hearst continues with his legacy, and today it is his grandson who’s in charge of the communications emporium.
The Maxwells
Just as there are success stories, there are also families who truly reached their worst after being at the top. The bigger the enemy, the bigger the fall, and the Maxwells are the perfect examples of this.
Things were not always bad for this family. At the time, Robert Maxwell, owner of Maxwell Communications, had the Daily Mirror and the New York Daily, giving a real fight to other moguls like Rupert Murdoch.
But it all went downhill when Robert began to accumulate huge debts with the banks to such a degree that he did the unthinkable, or so everyone believes: In 1991, he took his yacht, went to Tenerife, and drowned.
Suicide or accident? No one knows exactly, but what did happen was the fall of the Maxwell empire after the sudden death of the 68-year-old patriarch. Despite the efforts of his sons, Ian and Kevin, the company was irretrievable; and today, it is not even a shadow of what it was.
The Trumps
At this point, does this last name need an introduction? Loved by many, hated by many more, the Trump surname went down in world history when Donald Trump became president of the United States in 2015.
But before coming to this position, Donald Trump was already an incredibly powerful figure in the hotel and property management arena, renovating numerous offices, hotels, casinos, and golf courses.
In addition to this, he also worked in the field of entertainment, participating in the reality show The Apprentice, and had a cameo in Home Alone, among other programs.
From businessman to entertainment figure, and then to president of the United States, the story of Donald and his family is sometimes beyond fiction. But if we are honest, any story of the wealthiest families is beyond our comprehension. Perhaps Succession is much more realistic than we think.
Translated by Gaby Flores