BMW’s main single shareholder is the legendary Quandt family. The family holds 46% share of the Bavarian company. It could be debated that this bulk stake makes BMW a family business rather than a public company.

Recently BMW AG and traditional arch rival Daimler AG who are owners of Mercedes-Benz are going to buy stakes worth 7% in each other’s businesses. This was reported in Germany’s Der Spiegel newspaper. Now it is reported that the Quandt family will oppose such a deal.
Presently the two companies have agreed to buy in bulk parts that are common for both of them. BMW has the same kind of agreement with PSA Group where the Germans develop 1.6-litre petrol engines and the French use their monolithic buying power to bring down the total production costs for both entities. The deal is for 1 million engines where PSA takes 800,000 and BMW keeps 200,000.