Ownership profile
Who owns Levi's?
Levi's is the flagship brand of Levi Strauss & Co., a publicly traded company on the NYSE (ticker: LEVI) since March 2019; the Haas family — descendants of founder Levi Strauss — retain dominant voting control through a dual-class share structure, and no private equity firm is involved in ownership.
Ownership profile
Levi's
Levi Strauss & Co.
Evidence (9)
The company returned to public markets on March 21, 2019, pricing its IPO at $17 per share and raising roughly $623 million from the sale of about 36.7 million Class A shares.
https://legalclarity.org/who-owns-levis-the-haas-family-and-shareholders/The company operates a dual-class share structure: Class A shares (1 vote each) trade publicly on the NYSE, while Class B shares (10 votes each) are held almost entirely by the Haas family and related trusts.
https://legalclarity.org/who-owns-levis-the-haas-family-and-shareholders/In February 2019, the company filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for an initial public offering to be traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol LEVI.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levi_Strauss_%26_Co.After the 2019 IPO, Haas family members owned approximately 75.5% of the company's shares and controlled 74.4% of voting rights, per the public IPO filing.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/willyakowicz/2019/03/21/levi-strauss-heirs-sell-300-million-in-shares-at-ipo-pushing-family-net-worth-past-4-billion/Levi Strauss & Co. Class A Common Stock trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol LEVI, confirmed by NYSE listing certificate filed with the SEC in March 2019.
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0000094845/000087666119000259/LEVI8A031819.pdfThe largest institutional Class A holders as of early 2026 include JP Morgan Asset Management, BNY Asset Management, and Vanguard Capital Management — these are public market asset managers, not PE firms.
https://legalclarity.org/who-owns-levis-the-haas-family-and-shareholders/As of 2024–2025, the Haas family and related entities retain majority voting power via Class B shares, with public filings showing family voting control exceeding 60% of total votes.
https://portersfiveforce.com/blogs/owners/levistraussIn 1985, the Haas family re-privatized the company via a leveraged buyout (approximately $1.6–1.7 billion), which was a family-led and management-led transaction — not a private equity buyout.
https://portersfiveforce.com/blogs/owners/levistraussAlthough the corporation is registered in Delaware, the company's corporate headquarters is located in Levi's Plaza in San Francisco.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levi_Strauss_%26_Co.What's uncertain
- No PE firm ownership found in any public source; the 1985 leveraged buyout was family- and management-led, not PE-led.
- The dual-class structure means the Haas family controls the company's strategic direction despite public trading; this is family control, not PE involvement.
- Institutional shareholders (Vanguard, BlackRock, JPMorgan) hold Class A economic stakes only and have no effective voting control.
- Exact current Class B share distribution among individual Haas family members is not broken down in freely available public filings.
- pe_involvement is scored 'none' based on multiple consistent sources showing family and public ownership with no PE firm identified; this is a positive finding, not an absence of data.