With wealth estimated at $25.1 billion, the Hoffmann-Oeri family ranks 22nd on Bloomberg’s world’s richest dynasties list. The family traces its prosperity to Fritz Hoffmann-La Roche, whose 1896 pharmaceutical company located in Basel, Switzerland, enjoyed early success for its orange-flavored cough syrup called Sirolin.
Now a global leader with $190 billion in market value, Roche Holding AG is the world’s biggest manufacturer of cancer drugs and bought biotechnology firm Genentech for $44 billion in 2009.
Today, Hoffmann-La Roche’s descendants control 45 pe rcent of Roche’s voting shares and an 8 per cent interest in the company. The fourth-generation family members participate in a shareholding pooling agreement that was established in 1948. The group includes Fritz Hoffmann’s great-grandsons Andre Hoffmann and Andreas Oeri.
Andreas’s father, Dr. Oeri-Hoffmann, married Vera Hoffmann, the granddaughter of Fritz, in 1948, establishing the union between the families. Fritz’s granddaughter, Maja Oeri, pulled her shares from the shareholding pool in 2013, eliminating the family’s controlling stake in the company. Her estimated net worth is $2.3 billion. The family has created at least 12 billionaires among them through their business dealings.
