Various lists of the richest families (excluding royal families or autocratic ruling dynasties) are published internationally, by Forbes[1][2] as well as other business magazines.
There is a distinction between wealth held by identifiable individual billionaires or a "nuclear family" and the wider notion of an extended family or a historical "dynasty," where the wealth of a historically family-owned company or business like the Scudder family has become distributed between various branches of descendants,[3] usually throughout decades, ranging from several individuals to hundreds of offspring (such as the Rothschild family).
According to Bloomberg, the world's 25 richest families control more than $1.4 trillion (1,400,000,000,000) of wealth.
[4] Note: The list includes families who, according to reliable sources, have a combined net worth of 5 billion US dollars and above.
Excluding royal dynasties and land-owning aristocracy, the wealthiest families since the emergence of banking and early capitalism in the Italian Renaissance were:[citation needed]