Eu Yan Sang: the fourth generation bought the family brand back and modernised it

Eu Kong opened his first Chinese medicine shop in Gopeng, Perak, in 1879, selling herbal cures to tin-mine coolies who otherwise numbed themselves with opium. His son Eu Tong Sen built the business across Malaya, Singapore and Hong Kong, but died in 1941 leaving his estate equally to 13 sons. By 1973 the family's mines, banks and property were sold or liquidated; only the medicine business survived, with the family still holding 75%.

Richard Eu, a fourth-generation descendant trained in law and merchant banking, joined the ailing holding company in 1989 to keep the last family business alive. It nearly failed anyway: relatives kept selling their stakes, and by February 1990 the construction group Lum Chang Holdings had become majority shareholder. The founder's brand now belonged to outsiders.

In 1993 Richard Eu and three cousins staged a buyout of the pharmaceutical arm for S$21m and formed Eu Yan Sang International. They modernised what they bought back — Chinese medicine in capsules, bottled birds' nest, herbal soup mixes, then clinics — listed the company on the Singapore Exchange in 2000, and grew it into a regional TCM retail chain.

The fourth generation bought the brand back for S$21m in 1993; in 2024 a Mitsui-Rohto consortium valued Eu Yan Sang at about S$808m.

Thirteen equal heirs and a third generation already cashing out meant the last surviving business would keep slipping away in small lots.

Richard Eu's merchant-banking and stockbroking background made a structured buyout of Lum Chang's stake financeable rather than a sentimental gesture.

Cousins Robert and Clifford Eu joined the buyout, pooling enough family control to act in one block instead of thirteen.

The rebuild paired the buyback with products that suited modern retail, giving the company cash flow to carry the acquisition debt.

Equal inheritance can dilute a family firm to death: the generation that cares most has to buy out the others early, or the family name ends up owned by strangers.

Eu Yan Sang International listed on SGX in 2000 with Richard Eu as CEO, expanded to about 170 outlets and TCM clinics across Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong and Macau, and won him Singapore's Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year in 2011. A consortium around the Eu family, Temasek's Tower Capital Asia and UOB's fund took it private in 2016 in a deal valuing it near US$196m. In 2024 Japan's Mitsui & Co and Rohto Pharmaceutical bought 86% for US$516m, valuing the firm at about S$808m, with family members reinvesting a minority.