America's Top 150 Family Businesses

Listed companies cover enterprises in 36 states (New York leads the pack with 18, followed by California with 13 and Illinois, Texas and Pennsylvania with 11 each). Although tiny Arkansas boats just four firms in our Largest 150, two of them (Wal-Mart and Tyson Foods) rank among the top seven.

The group mixes companies overrun with relatives and those employing just one or two. They’re public (67 companies) as well as private (83). Age-wise, they run the gamut from the Fribourg family’s ContiGroup (founded in Belgium in 1813) to high-tech startups (Perot Systems, founded in 1988). Personnel-wise they range from Wal-Mart with 1.4 million employees to Host Marriott with 189.

But all share a few common characteristics:

• A single family controls the company’s ownership.

• The controlling family’s members are currently active in top management.

• The family has been involved in the company for at least two generations—or seems likely to be.

Read more here.