He said the family consisted of strong individuals, but that "it is remarkable the basic harmony and direction we have had."

Still, the transaction is the most striking sign yet that the Forbes heirs are rapidly dismantling the assets created by their father. Since the dot-com debacle, which saw a major downturn in magazine advertising, Malcolm Forbes's children rapidly have sold off a variety of his collections. Those sales, and a handful of others in the early and mid-1990s, have raised more than $200 million.

But now the heirs are finally selling a stake in the single asset they own that generates income, which apparently no longer is producing enough capital to support the growing number of Forbeses.

Steve Forbes described the deal with Elevation Partners as an attempt to expand the empire. He declined to say if any of the capital would go to family members. "That is one of the advantages of being privately held," he said, adding that "I can tell you we are making major investments."

Forbes said that earlier sales of the family's collections were part of estate planning (there are nine grandchildren and five great grandchildren). "You can give them cash or eggs," he said, referring to the Fabergé collection. "Not everyone wants eggs."

The family has sold off everything except several thousand paintings, but there are no more "Oh, My God" paintings left, as one person who knows the family said of the Fabergé collection that caused such a stir two years ago.

The sale of a stake in Forbes is yet another reminder of how challenging it is for a family business to survive into the third generation. Two family dynasties - the Hearsts and the Newhouses of Condé Nast - dominate the magazine industry in part because they diversified early into cable and other media. But elsewhere, the sale of troubled family media businesses has come to seem inevitable. In some cases, battles about assets have torn apart families, as was the case with the Binghams, who once owned an empire that included The Courier-Journal of Louisville, Kentucky.