Roche's founder lost control of his company in the 1919 crisis, and his heirs used a voting pool and a $20.7 billion buyback from Novartis to hold it

Fritz Hoffmann was born in Basel in 1868. In 1895 he married Adèle La Roche. On 2 November 1896 he and his father declared the founding of F. Hoffmann-La Roche & Co. Russia became its largest market. The Russian Revolution of 1917 brought the firm near bankruptcy. In 1919 it was restructured as a limited company with money from the Basler Handelsbank, headed by his brother-in-law. Hoffmann kept only a minority stake. The same year he and Adèle ended their marriage. He died on 18 April 1920, aged 52. His manager Emil Barell took over and bought his son Alfred's stake. His elder son Emanuel was killed in a traffic accident in 1932. Emanuel's widow Maja married the conductor Paul Sacher, who represented the founding family on Roche's board from 1938 to 1997 and helped it regain a voting majority. In May 2001 Novartis bought 20% of the voting shares from Martin Ebner's BZ Group for 4.83 billion francs, and later held about a third. On 4 November 2021 Roche agreed to buy back Novartis's 53.3 million shares for about 19 billion francs and cancel them. The Hoffmann and Oeri family pool's vote rose from about 50% to about 67.5%. In February 2023 Maja Hoffmann sold 2.7 million shares for more than 800 million francs, and the pool's share fell to 72.6%.