Family Politics, Consolidating Power, Going Public & Taking Private
Thirteen uncles on one board, and nobody called the shots. Richard Eu on regaining control of Eu Yan Sang, taking it public, then private.
On the show
The Business Family Diagnostic · Governance
Thirteen uncles, and nobody called the shots.
Richard's grandfather left the business to his sons in roughly equal shares, with no way to decide. When your family disagrees about the family enterprise, is there an agreed way to settle it?
“We have an agreed way to make family decisions that affect everyone.”
Biography
Richard Eu is a fourth-generation Eu. His grandfather was tycoon and philanthropist Eu Tong Sen who remains a legend in Singapore for the vast commercial empire he built across Southeast Asia in the early 1900’s. Tong Sen had 11 wives with whom he had 24 children, setting the stage for a complex and conflicted period of succession following his death in 1941.
One of the family’s last remaining businesses, Eu Yan Sang, a network of Traditional Chinese Medicine dispensaries, was founded by Richard Eu’s great-grandfather Eu Kong and the family’s fifth generation are still in the business today. This is a gripping story of family politics, loss of control, re-consolidation, an IPO, and ultimately privatisation of the family firm once again.
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