For decades the Gulf’s family enterprises have been judged on what they hold. The second day of the Forbes Middle East Family Business Summit 2026 in Abu Dhabi argued that the better question is what they build next, and whether the family behind the balance sheet still wants to sit at the same table.
Across sessions on succession, industrial policy, healthcare and leadership by the next generation, the speakers returned to a single theme: the structures that once protected family wealth are now the ones that constrain it. Capital is not the scarce resource. Readiness is.
The three-generation myth, tested
Noah Raford, managing partner at EMIR, used the opening spotlight to dismantle one of the most quoted statistics in family business. The claim that 70% of family wealth disappears by the second generation and 90% by the third, he said, traces back to a late-1980s study of 200 family firms in Illinois that measured business continuity rather than preserved wealth. Acquisitions and successful exits were frequently counted as failures.
His review of roughly 400 to 500 studies across six disciplines points the other way, with family wealth typically enduring for 10 to 15 generations. What breaks the chain is rarely the market. Raford identified three recurring threats: founders who delay leadership transitions, unresolved feelings of unfairness among relatives, and heirs given too little room to develop independence.
He described these pressures as psychological and social rather than financial or legal, and argued that families should surface succession expectations long before a transfer is needed. His framing of the test is blunt: whether the money survives is not the real question, it is whether the family still enjoys one another’s company once the founder steps back.
From distribution to manufacturing
Attention then turned to where family capital can be deployed with more ambition. Mariam Humaid AlDhaheri, adviser at the Ministry of Industry and Advanced Technology, told delegates that enterprises with established distribution networks, international partnerships and hard-won market knowledge are unusually well placed to move into domestic production.
Her advice on sequencing was pointed. Businesses should start with the customer and the product rather than the factory, and should choose technology partners willing to transfer knowledge and invest locally. Domestic manufacturing, she argued, does more than add margin; it strengthens the resilience of the wider UAE economy.
The scale of the opportunity was set out by Salem Bafaraj, vice president of ICV industrial development and execution at ADNOC, who said the company has launched AED 60 billion in manufacturing opportunities through 2030, spanning about 200 essential products used across its operations and projects. He invited family businesses to review the pipeline, assess their capabilities honestly and engage early, while making clear that quality and commercial discipline remain non-negotiable if UAE-made products are to compete internationally.
Legacy as a platform, not a cage
Mansoor Abdul-Jabbar Alsayegh, group CEO of Al Sayegh Group, described joining the family business in 2009 as an act of stewardship. Protecting a legacy, he said, means safeguarding the family’s reputation, ethics and foundations, while growing it requires moving into sectors the founders never entered. The group has diversified from electronics into retail, food and beverage, oil and gas, and sports management.
Its 20% stake in a UK-based football academy, since expanded into Abu Dhabi and drawing more than 200 children in under a year, came from watching where the emirate was directing its attention. The lesson he drew was about listening to the market rather than assuming the family already knows it.
Bader Nasser Al-Kulaib, vice chairman and co-founder of SHASHA and co-founder and CEO of Almudhaf & Alkulaib Group, offered a different inheritance. What passed to him was not a company but a set of values: integrity, honesty and resolve. He argued that leadership should follow merit rather than family hierarchy, and that governance and professional talent are what allow a family enterprise to keep earning trust. His recollection of a business partner quietly granting customers a free year of service after a cyberattack on SHASHA’s streaming platform made the point about trust more vividly than any framework.
What family capital does next
The agenda across both days ranged further, taking in artificial intelligence, healthcare investment and the mechanics of moving family money beyond traditional assets. Danube Group’s Adel Sajan described how AI has cut property design cycles from four to five months to about six weeks, while healthcare panelists made the case that family offices, free from fund exit clocks, can hold long-development assets that venture and private equity vehicles cannot.
Taken together, the sessions described a generation of Gulf family businesses shifting from custodians of capital to operators of it. That transition asks more of governance than of balance sheets, and it rewards the families that start planning early rather than the ones that wait for a founder to step aside.
Source: Forbes Middle East