Secretive family behind Tetra Pak bets bulk of US$9b on stocks via Singapore entities

Business Times

16-07-2025

[KUALA LUMPUR] A mysterious entity based in the heart of Singapore's financial district emerged as the biggest shareholder in International Flavors & Fragrances (IFF) nine years ago.
It turned out that the owner was the Rausing family, which hails from Sweden and made a fortune from Tetra Pak cartons. It is now also clear that the stake was one of the first public disclosures about how the media-shy clan deploys its billions.
Today, the family has amassed a stock portfolio worth around US$9 billion and spanning more than 100 companies in Europe and the United States, according to a Bloomberg analysis of regulatory filings.
Through entities in Liechtenstein, Singapore and Switzerland, the Rausings have a US$1.9 billion stake in IFF, US$2.4 billion in industrial-gas company Linde and US$2.2 billion in flavour-maker Givaudan, and smaller holdings in companies from Apple to Wells Fargo, regulatory filings show.
The scale of these bets, which has not previously been reported, and the entities that hold them, highlight the growing sophistication in how some of the world's richest families manage their money, and the broader boom in the family office industry.
Representatives for the Rausing family-owned corporation Tetra Laval, and the different entities, either declined to comment or did not respond to requests for comment.
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The vast majority of the US$9 billion is concentrated in just five stocks: IFF, Linde, Givaudan, Sensient Technologies, which makes speciality ingredients, and consumer-packaging company SIG Group.
Those investments have been held by Singaporean companies that ultimately are controlled by a Liechtenstein entity called Haldor Foundation.
A Switzerland-based investment firm called Longbow Finance held a portfolio of about 80 US-traded securities that added up to US$835 million as of March 31. Longbow has catered to the Rausing family's wealth for decades.
Another Swiss investment firm, called Freemont Management, also held a broad portfolio of securities worth US$304 million at the end of March.
Freemont was established in 1994 and was recorded as a subsidiary of Tetra Laval as recently as May 2025, according to Orbis, a database of company data.
The disclosures only comprise holdings in publicly traded securities that meet certain thresholds for size or complexity. It is possible that the three entities hold investments in other assets with different transparency rules.
Longbow's assets, for example, have also included hedge funds, private credit and real estate.
It is difficult to discern how the bets have played out because the filings largely show their present value but often not their purchase price.
IFF's shares, for example, have returned -29 per cent since the Rausings first disclosed their stake in the New York-based company, compared with 242 per cent for the S&P 500 Index. By contrast, Givaudan has returned 41 per cent since the stake appeared in its annual report for fiscal 2022, almost double the Swiss Exchange Performance Index.
But the portfolio has kept growing regardless of share prices. Filings in Singapore show that two subsidiaries there – Winder Investments and Winder – periodically received infusions of tens or hundreds of millions of US dollars, respectively.
The source of the money remains unclear, like much else about the finances of the Rausings and Tetra Laval. The closely held company does not disclose its complete results, so it is not possible to determine how much of its potential profits is distributed to the owners.
It is also not clear which family members are the ultimate beneficiaries of the three investment entities. Previous news reports have named Finn, Jorn, and Kirsten Rausing, grandchildren of Tetra Laval founder Ruben Rausing, as the beneficiaries of Haldor.
The Bloomberg Billionaires Index credits each of the siblings with one-third of Tetra Laval, which helps put their respective net worth at about US$5.9 billion. But the index does not allocate them a specific slice of either of the three investment firms.
The siblings, who are in their 60s and 70s, came in line to take over the business after their father, Gad Rausing, bought out their uncle in 1995.
Gad's father, Ruben, was born in the small community of Raus in southern Sweden in 1895. He spent several years in New York where he studied at Columbia University.
He saw the city's self-service grocery stores and figured the concept would soon be adopted in Europe, which would drastically increase demand for hygienic and practical consumer-sized packages of grocery staples.
He returned home and started a packaging company. The tetrahedron-shaped milk carton, developed in the 1940s and 1950s, became a breakthrough product. Last year, the company produced 178 billion packs and collected US$18.5 billion of revenue. BLOOMBERG