Family Business Network International (FBN)

The Family Business Network is a federation of 33 member associations spanning 65 countries, founded in 1989 and headquartered in Lausanne. It is the largest organisation of its kind: around 4,500 business families and 20,000 individual members, of whom roughly 8,000 belong to the next generation community.

Its self-description sets the tone. FBN calls itself a network to learn from, share with and inspire each other, and everything about the structure follows from families running it for themselves rather than a company running it for them.

Who joins

FBN is for business-owning families, meaning families whose wealth still sits substantially in an operating company. That is a real distinction from most of this directory, which addresses families whose wealth has already been converted into a portfolio.

Membership covers the family rather than one representative, and spans generations by design. FBN describes itself as a platform for intergenerational learning where members of all age groups connect, and it maintains separate communities for the next generation and for the generation currently in charge.

How membership works

You join through a national or regional member association rather than through the international body. There are 33 of them, so the practical first step is finding the one covering your country, whose name, dues and calendar will differ from its neighbours.

That federated structure is why no international price is published. Dues are set locally, and the figure in Singapore will not be the figure in Switzerland or Brazil. Ask the association covering your market.

The upside of the model is that you get a local community that meets in your language and understands your legal and tax context, plus access to the global network on top.

What members get

National association events form the base: regular gatherings with families in your own market, which are the ones most members actually attend. Above that sits the international summit, which brings the federation together across all 65 countries.

The next generation programme is the strongest single argument for FBN. Eight thousand members aged 18 and upward, spread across the federation, is by a wide margin the largest organised community of rising family business members anywhere, and it addresses the specific position of someone who will inherit responsibility for a company they did not build.

For a family whose main asset remains the business, FBN is the natural first membership to consider, and the local association is where to start.