Business Observer - Family Values (Cover Story)

Punit Shah knows the difference between a family business and a family-owned company, because his family's Liberty Group hotel development enterprise has been both.

It was a family business when his father, Rexit Shah, founded it as a hotel chain owner along Interstate 80 near Youngstown, Ohio, in the 1980s. Since Punit Shah, 34, took over in the late 2000s after his father divested those hotels, Liberty Group has become a family-owned company, buying and selling hotels around the country, and managing nearly $400 million in investments.

“We have investors and partners, and far more of a corporate structure, but the largest stakeholders are still my family, and that's important,” Shah says. “We have had to change with the times on how we do business, but what this company is at its core will never change.”