IPT News

Every family business is inherited twice.
The first inheritance is ownership.
The second is meaning.

Ownership is transferred through law and governance. Meaning is carried through the example that leaders set and a shared understanding of the enterprise’s purpose. That second inheritance determines whether a company simply continues or truly endures. This was the deeper significance of Dr. Toni M. Issa’s participation in the Family Business Network Levant 10-Year Anniversary Summit, held on 25 September 2026 at ESA Business School in Beirut.

ISSA Global is the unified family identity bringing together ISSA Group, ISSA Ventures and the Michel Issa Foundation. At the origin of this journey stands IPT, the business Michel Issa began building from a single service station in Amchit in 1970. Over more than five decades, that beginning has grown into a Lebanese energy leader and a regional family enterprise rooted in the same conviction: what is built with purpose must create value that lasts beyond its founders.

The Family Business Network provided a fitting setting for this conversation. FBN is the world’s leading organization of business families. Through FBN Levant, it brings together family business owners and next-generation leaders from Lebanon and the region to consider how an enterprise can remain cohesive and relevant across generations.
Following the premiere of "Beginnings Without End | بدايات لا تنتهي", the documentary dedicated to Michel Issa, Dr. Issa received a special invitation to join the summit. Hosted by television anchor and podcast host Rania Ziade Achkar, the conversation, “The Power of Storytelling in Preserving the Family’s Legacy," explored why a family story is far more than a record of the past. 
It is a strategic instrument for the future. A founding story gives generations a common language.
It makes founding principles tangible and turns values into standards for leadership.
The stakes are real. In PwC’s 2025 Global Family Business Survey, 83% of family businesses said they are guided by clear family values, while only 57% had formally documented them. The gap matters. Values that remain assumed can lose their force over time. Values that are articulated, shared, and lived can become an institutional compass.
For Lebanon, this discussion carries particular importance. The country needs enterprises able to look beyond immediate horizons and carry trust through change. Family businesses are uniquely positioned to do this when their history becomes a source of direction rather than a source of nostalgia. The documentary preserves Michel Issa’s story. The FBN conversation placed that unique story in its wider purpose: equipping future generations to carry it forward with a clear sense of responsibility.
As Dr. Toni M. Issa has expressed: “It reflects our belief that building something lasting, building it right, and building it for others are not separate ideas, but part of the same responsibility.”
For ISSA Global and IPT, legacy means turning a founding vision into a living institution, one that grows with discipline and equips future generations with both the capacity to lead and a clear reason to do so. The story began in Amchit. Its future will be written by those entrusted to carry its values further.