The Frère family is one of the richest and best-known families in Belgium, due to their exclusive ownership of Frère-Bourgeois Holding Company, one of Europe’s most successful conglomerates. Frère-Bourgeois has two main pillars under its full or partial control, Compagnie Nationale à Portefeuille (CNP) and Groupe Bruxelles Lambert (GBL). The family patriarch is well-known Belgian industrialist Albert Frère, who held the title of Belgium’s richest man at the time of his passing in 2018. He was born in 1926 and left school at the age of 17 in the middle of WWII to help run his family’s scrap-metal business following the death of his father. Albert supervised his family’s purchase of their first steel mill in Charleroi. By the time they sold their interests in the steel industry in the 1980s, the Frère family was said to have practically controlled the entire Belgian steel industry. Albert Frère sought to diversify the family’s interests and, through the Frère-Bourgeois Holding Company, began acquiring and investing in a variety of companies around the globe. Albert’s son, Gérald Frère, joined his father in the family business in 1972, when he became Managing Director of Frère-Bourgeois. Ten years later, he was appointed to the Board of GBL, where he has served as Chairman since 2012. He also serves as vice-chairman of Pargesa. Gérald’s daughter, Ségolène Gallienne, 41, sits on the board of both companies.
