No. The actual ownership and control must be assessed under the qualifying-relationship rules. Family connection alone does not establish the relationship.
Use the legal facts
Identify the entities, holdings and governing arrangements rather than relying on shared surnames or informal cooperation. Even an established qualifying relationship does not replace the applicant’s employment and role requirements.
The general rule permits qualifying specialized-knowledge foreign employment, but new-office L-1A has a narrower foreign-capacity requirement. Do not assume that a transaction announcement cures a missing relationship or that every organizational change necessarily destroys an otherwise qualifying history. Establish which of the four recognised relationships exists and produce the documents that show it, then confirm both entities are trading rather than dormant, then reconstruct the year abroad from records that already existed. Where the same individual or group of individuals owns and controls both entities in approximately the same proportions, the two are affiliates and the corporate condition is met. A geographically scattered team does not by itself establish that the role is primarily managerial or executive. If the answer is that the structure does not fit, the group can consider adjusting ownership before filing, but the change must be real and documented, and recent changes will be examined for whether the entities genuinely operate as a group.