I rather doubt it but I was wondering what other people thought of this question. I doubt it because of how well they have done for the last several hundred years but I also think that that could be because of normalcy bias on my part. And just so we are clear, in my view there is no fate too horrible for those people.
If they have been able to hide their true wealth I'm not sure how they could hide it all, maybe decent portions of it but I don't know how they could hide significant portions. If anything they would probably have found a way to hide it in plain sight.
Thoughts please.
Really, that depends on what you mean by "goes bust" and what form that takes. In the extreme, physical possession will be the only thing maintained, and it's not possible to physically possess millions of acres of land and thousands of houses. Ownership will revert to a more common-law interpretation.
This is why it is going to be important to root out all of their assets which I suspect is going to be more difficult than we imagine. If these are truly a family operation they will hide assets for generations before making further attempts to seize control again.
Even individuals can play the shell corp. game.
Panama. Papers.
Systemic rot is bone deep.