Family Owned Business

When Liu Lan entertains clients at her Shanghai cosmetics shop, she pulls out a jug of Gallo's Carlo Rossi red wine. "The taste is fresh and it's easy to get used to," said Liu, 32, who thinks the big bottle "looks special, different from other wines." The cosmetics shop in crowded Shanghai represents just how much has changed since Ernest and Julio Gallo founded E.& J. Gallo Winery in an industrial section of rural Modesto after Prohibition ended in 1933. With annual sales of $3.

Petty Enterprises, the venerable NASCAR team led by Richard Petty, sold control of the family business Wednesday to investment firm Boston Ventures. Once one of stock car racing's most powerful teams with "The King" himself at the wheel, Petty Enterprises fell into mediocrity during the last two decades and hasn't won a race since 1999. "The time has come for Petty Enterprises to take the steps necessary to get back to victory lane," Petty, 70, said in a statement.

It's 4:30 in the morning and Jacob Paz has been awake for half an hour, trying to squeeze in a little homework. But the phone rings. A load of 250 Christmas trees is on the way. So much for the 17-year-old high school senior's plan to start his English essay on how two world wars fueled disillusionment in American literature. It's time to get to work. Since Oct.

When 7-foot-1, 325-pound Shaquille O'Neal couldn't fit into his new ground-hugging, $200,000 Lamborghini Gallardo, the former Laker center turned to an Orange County family to do a little magic. The Gaffoglios of Fountain Valley meticulously extended the doors, roof and side windows so the towering O'Neal could drive in comfort in what is now one of the longest Lamborghinis in the world. Bending and twisting cars into all kinds of shapes is nothing new to the Gaffoglio family.

On some days, Christine Hsu scarcely sees the city whose political and labor leadership her family has up in arms. Instead, she stays inside the Hilton Los Angeles Airport, the hotel her father bought, the hotel his company still owns, the hotel where she and her brother live for weeks at a time, 15 floors above Century Boulevard. The Hilton, with more than 1,200 rooms, is the second-largest hotel in Los Angeles County.

The Bancroft family, which has controlled the prestigious Wall Street Journal for more than a century, is the latest newspaper dynasty to be dismantled in mere months partly under the pressures of the Internet Age. Its agreement Tuesday to sell Dow Jones & Co. for $5 billion to media mogul Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.

Passing the leadership baton can be risky for a family-owned business, especially when the successor is an outsider. The long-term survival of the business and the fortunes of the family may be at stake. Yet few family business leaders are prepared to make the tough decisions necessary for a successful transition. Often it can take an outside advisor experienced in family business dynamics to manage the handoff.

Was Sumner Redstone's obsession with the creator of the video game "Mortal Kombat" the root of the unfolding family drama that has pitted the media mogul against his daughter and onetime heir apparent, Shari Redstone? People who know them both suggest that the billionaire's dealings in the second-tier video game company Midway Games Inc. was a flashpoint in their ruptured relationship.

At the trendy Suki 7 restaurant-bar in Westlake Village, tipplers might feel as if they've been launched into deep space, passing spinning galaxies. Or that they've plunged into the ocean amid amoeba-like creatures. It's not the martinis. It's the decor. The back wall is a dramatic expanse of black glass embedded with hundreds of oval swirls -- translucent slices of natural agate, backlit and glowing.

When Casey Loyd was looking to expand his spa-manufacturing business three years ago, several other states aggressively courted him to leave Southern California. The offers were tempting, but the Southland's ample supply of skilled labor and his own fondness for the area led Loyd to keep Cal Spas in Pomona. "If I was a bean counter and I was in a publicly traded company, I probably would have gone," said Loyd, the company's president.