When an Austrian marketer and a Thai businessman decided to launch Red Bull to the world, they settled on a simple ownership structure: each would own 49% of the venture.
Chalerm Yoovidhya, a son of the Thai businessman, got the remaining 2% and has kept it for around four decades as Red Bull became a roaring success and turned him, his father and at least nine other family members into billionaires.
On May 20, Chalerm transferred that stake to Fides Trustees SA, a Geneva-based trust company, according to an Austrian regulatory filing published to the corporate registry on Monday.
The filing didn’t specify why the stake was transferred, where it eventually will end up, or who will be its ultimate beneficiary. It’s worth about $1.1 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
“Fiduciary solutions such as this are common in order to ensure long-term continuity in large, successful companies,” a spokesperson for Red Bull said by email, declining to comment further on internal company or family decisions.
Representatives for TCP Group, which is controlled by the Yoovidhya family, didn’t immediately reply to an email seeking comment.
Fides Trustees says its “clients are typically international high and ultra-high net worth families and individuals” and that it works with them and their advisers to review and revise their personal structures as personal and family circumstances change. Fides did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.
The filing was signed by Chalerm, 74, and the three executives who’ve led Red Bull since Dietrich Mateschitz, the company’s Austrian co-founder, died in 2022. His Thai business partner and co-founder, Chaleo Yoovidhya, died in 2012.
Their partnership began in the 1980s, when Mateschitz traveled to Thailand and tried a local uncarbonated tonic that instantly cured his jet lag. He approached Chaleo, a businessman who was selling the tonic in Southeast Asia, and suggested that the two introduce the drink. One crucial change: It would be carbonated.
Its introduction in 1987 under the slogan “Gives you wings” helped create the entire energy drink industry as it’s known today. The company sold 12.7 billion cans of its caffeinated beverage last year, posting €11.2 billion ($12.8 billion) of revenue.
Red Bull’s global operations have been led from Austria since the company’s inception. It’s grown into one of the world’s largest sport-marketing empires, spanning Formula 1 auto racing, soccer and mountain biking.
The Yoovidhya family still holds its 49% stake in Red Bull through its Hong Kong-based holding company. Bloomberg values the stake at $27.9 billion, based on its results and the average enterprise value-to-sales multiple of four publicly traded peers. Mateschitz’s son Mark holds the remaining 49%.