When Shakespeare wrote, "Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown" he was talking about royalty, but I'm sure the travails of today's business elite would have attracted his attention. The recent demise of the House of Seagram, for instance, might be worthy of a play -- the tale of how a third-generation CEO loses the family empire.
Right now the press is heaping scorn on Edgar Bronfman, Jr., the Seagram scion whose Hollywood-influenced dreams lead to a series of risky and ultimately disastrous acquisitions. It's a fate that comes with the territory of all those who would be king. To me, what is most interesting about the story is what it says about the business of buying crown jewels.
When a business becomes as dominant and successful as Seagram was by the 1950s, it has almost no choice but to expand, acquire, and diversify. The companies and brands that are brought into the corporate family are like new in-laws whose own relatives start showing up at family functions, bearing all the baggage, hangups and skeletons in the closet you ever heard about before the wedding.