Only a few days ago, a dispute within O’Callaghan Collection, a family-owned hotel group in Ireland, once again brought to light a risk that is often underestimated in private wealth investments. When the governance structure was not designed to accommodate ownership, succession, and operations, family tensions cease to be a private matter and become a matter of control. As reported in connection with proceedings before a senior Irish court, the controversy pits Noel O’Callaghan, the group’s founder, against his children and has unfolded around a business built over four decades, involving financial claims exceeding several million euros and reflecting a much deeper conflict concerning the transition of the business, the exercise of control, and the interaction between family, ownership, and management. [1]
The case is particularly relevant because it publicly illustrates how a family-owned enterprise may deteriorate not due to lack of demand, a poor location, or even weakness in the underlying asset, but rather because of the absence of sufficiently clear rules governing the relationship among family, ownership, and management.
Mexico is not unfamiliar with this reality. The International Finance Corporation (IFC) has summarized the phenomenon with a compelling statistic: 95% of family businesses do not survive into the third generation[2]. That figure is especially telling because a significant portion of global economic activity continues to depend on family capital and on structures controlled by families.
For a family office or a business-owning family evaluating investments in Mexico, the central lesson should not be limited to determining whether an asset performs today, but rather to asking whether the structure has been designed to sustain that investment over time, regulate the relationship between ownership and management, and facilitate a reasonable transition to future generations.
What practices and tools help a family office think in the long term?
From a family office perspective, the objective should not be limited to properly structuring the entry into an investment, but rather to assessing how well prepared that structure is to withstand the passage of time, generational change, and the natural tensions among family, ownership, management, and operations.
Each investment requires a different reading depending on the asset, the family composition, the degree of institutionalization, and the level of operational involvement the family wishes to retain. Nevertheless, there are certain practices and tools that, when properly implemented, help preserve value and reduce future friction.
- Institutionalization
The first step is not usually to make the structure more sophisticated, but rather to institutionalize it. For a family office, institutionalization means beginning to separate functions, document processes, formalize material decisions, and create a structure that allows the wealth or business project to endure beyond the generation that gave rise to it.
- Family Protocol and Family Governance
In family-controlled structures, there is often a need for a separate framework to organize matters that pertain more to the relationship among family, ownership, and long-term vision than to the day-to-day operation of the business.
This is where instruments such as a family protocol, a family council, or a family assembly may prove useful. These mechanisms help define expectations, organize coexistence among family branches, establish criteria for the incorporation of family members into the business, align succession principles, and reduce the likelihood that wealth-related disagreements escalate into corporate conflicts.
- Enforceable Corporate and Contractual Rules
A substantial part of the value of a sound structure lies in having clear and enforceable corporate rules. From a more traditional corporate governance perspective, this requires attention to the position of the shareholders, their information and voting rights, the functioning of the shareholders’ meeting, the functions and responsibilities of the management body, as well as oversight mechanisms, accountability, transparency, and internal controls[3].
- Succession and Continuity
Thinking in the long term requires addressing succession before succession becomes unavoidable.
This entails not only identifying who may assume future roles, but also defining under what conditions, with what preparation, under which oversight bodies, and pursuant to what transition rules. In sophisticated wealth structures, succession should not be treated as a spontaneous family event, but rather as a matter of governance and continuity.
- Operations, Control, and Exit in Hospitality
In the particular case of hospitality, the analysis does not end with the corporate structure. It also matters who operates the asset, under what incentives, subject to what controls, and what remedies are available if the relationship ceases to function properly. Accordingly, for a family office, long-term planning in this sector also requires reviewing how the operator is aligned with the owner’s objectives, what information and oversight rights are available, how operations coexist with financing, and what exit, replacement, or continuity mechanisms are in place if business conditions or family circumstances change.
For a family office, thinking about corporate governance is, in reality, thinking about wealth continuity. It is not merely a matter of organizing the relationship between partners and operators, or of preventing disputes, but of building a structure capable of sustaining the investment beyond the founder, the current generation, or even the specific asset involved.
At Cuesta Campos, we advise business-owning families, private wealth investors, and family offices in translating that vision of continuity into concrete structures and tools, ranging from the design and review of shareholders’ agreements, decision-making rules, and exit mechanisms, to the implementation of instruments that help organize the relationship among family, ownership, management, and operations. Rather than relying on standardized solutions, our approach is grounded in understanding the logic of each family, the nature of each investment, and the generational stage at which it stands, in order to help build frameworks that preserve value and support the long-term viability of the family’s wealth.
[1] https://www.irishtimes.com/business/2026/04/15/son-of-hotelier-noel-ocallaghan-greatly-regrets-telling-his-father-he-wanted-to-shoot-him-over-business-dispute/
[2] https://www.ifc.org/en/what-we-do/sector-expertise/corporate-governance/family-business-governance
[3] León Tovar, Soyla H., Gobierno corporativo de las sociedades anónimas, Tirant lo Blanch, col. Empresas -México-, 2020.
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