J.M. Huber, one of the largest and oldest family-held companies in the US, had strategically repositioned itself several times since it was founded in 1883 as a dry-color business. Visionary family leaders and a committed senior management team had transformed the group into an international player with operations in more than 20 countries and about half of its 4,000 employees based outside North America. A portfolio management company (PMC), J.M. Huber became one of the key players in hydrocolloids, specialty chemicals and minerals, and engineered woods, and in 2017 it booked sales of US$2.3 billion. In 1993, Peter T. Francis, a fourth-generation family member, became chairman and CEO. For the fifth time in J.M. Huber's history, the family took complete leadership of the company. The years ahead were not always kind. In 2004 the firm had levered up its balance sheet to complete the largest acquisition in its history. Then, 2006 brought the collapse of the US housing market, and the economic crisis of 2007 hit many of J.M. Huber's key markets hard, putting the group under pressure. In the midst of the crisis, the company faced another significant milestone in its long history: Peter T. Francis had already announced in 2004 that he planned to retire in 2009. He was well aware that leadership succession was one of the most delicate moments for a family business, even in the best of times. How did the family and the board of directors support Peter T. Francis's decision to step down from his dual leadership function in the middle of the global recession? How was the succession engineered? What came first: CEO succession or chairman succession? Who was chosen for the CEO and the chairman positions: internal or external candidates, family or non-family members?
As circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic continued to shift and evolve, J.M. Huber Corporation (Huber) remained focused on protecting its employees, maintaining business continuity, and on advancing its multi-year sustainability strategy. The efforts of Mike Marberry, the President & CEO, the Huber Management Council (HMC), the family shareholders, as well as company diversification, helped the company to remain stable. What is more, 2020 brought the strongest financial results in Huber's 138-year history! But new challenges were on the horizon... One of the largest and oldest family-held companies headquartered in the US, Huber had strategically repositioned itself several times since its founding in 1883 as a dry-colors business. Visionary family leaders and a committed senior management transformed the company from a single plant in Brooklyn, New York, into an international player operating in more than 20 countries, with about half of its 4,100 employees based outside North America. Structured as a portfolio managed company (PMC), Huber has become one of the key global players in hydrocolloids, specialty chemicals, minerals, agriculture solutions and engineered wood products, with a turnover of nearly US$3.5 billion in 2021. The succession of Peter Francis, the last family President & CEO and Board Chair had come at the worst possible time − during the Great Recession. Now Huber's first non-family CEO & President, Mike Marberry, is planning his own succession for 2022, unaware of the impending COVID-19 crisis. Would the resilience and experience gained from the last transition provide an effective template to help the company face the next crisis and leadership change more than a decade later? Would the family rally behind Marberry and the company to once again turn this difficult moment into an opportunity to show its resilience? What role would Huber's governance model and sustainability strategy play?
London, UK, July 2020. G. Garvin Brown IV, the chairman of Brown-Forman Corporation and 5th generation family shareholder, was preparing to celebrate the firm's 150th anniversary. Despite its current global footprint, a turnover in excess of $3.3 billion and over 4,800 employees worldwide, Brown-Forman had remained in Louisville, Kentucky, close to the Old Forester Distillery, the founding brands' Pre-Prohibition headquarters (1882-1919), on Louisville's historic Main Street, also known as "Whiskey Row". COVID-19, however, had ruined the party, forcing the family to cancel the celebrations. Every family member had received their 150th Anniversary bottles of the limited-edition bourbon, taken from 6 barrels aged for 150 months, as well as a recently published book documenting the amazing history of Brown-Forman through photos, illustrations and artifacts. The pandemic would have a dramatic impact on economies around the world, affecting not only employees' lives but also the livelihoods of partners in the broader hospitality industry. The publicly listed, family-controlled company had weathered worse storms in the past, including Prohibition, which had tested the firm's resilience. Having a long-term-focused, engaged stockholder base and a strong governance system were tremendous advantages in such situations, especially when selling aged products with time-tested brands. Together with the two former CEOs and the board, Brown had painstakingly put together solid company and family governance structures and processes and carefully rebalanced the portfolio in a bid to mitigate the impact of downturns. Still, Garvin could not help wondering how well the delicately crafted system would hold under this real-world "stress test."
The case, based on extensive interviews with top executives and two generations of Dachser family owners, documents the genesis and spectacular growth of the global logistics specialist, a group that now has close to 400 locations on all five continents and employs 30,000+ people. Despite its global footprint, Dachser stayed loyal to both its core business - intelligent logistics - and to Kempten, a picturesque town of 70,000+ inhabitants and the center of gravity for Dachser's operations and the place the Dachser family owners call home. Dachser received the IMD Global Family Business Award in 2019
MILAN (ITALY), SEPTEMBER 2018. The Strategic Lab at De Agostini, part strategic think-tank and part assessment tool for the next-generation talent of the Drago-Boroli family, owners of De Agostini, was brainstorming the future direction of the diversified, family-owned group. After almost 100 years in the publishing and printing business, the third-generation family leader Marco Drago set the family firm on a radical new course, which included globalization and diversification across media and communication, gaming, and financial services to create a powerhouse, with entities listed on three different stock exchanges. However, diversification did not come without its challenges. Could portfolio repurposing also serve to anchor the family's identity? Were family values properly embedded in the current structures and investments? Should the holding structure be perennialized or be treated as a temporary arrangement until the next major liquidity event, when assets would again be refocused on a single industry? Did the legacy publishing business still serve a purpose or should it be disposed of? Emotional ties ran deep, but so did the losses... and those were not sustainable. Could it be turned around or pivoted to capture the latest digitalization wave?
PERTH, AUSTRALIA, September 2016. Torsten Ketelsen's history, for the last 30 years, had been deeply intertwined with that of garnet, the hardest industrial sand. He very much created a market for it, then brought GMA Garnet to a market leader position with a 40 per cent global market share. GMA Garnet's success was based on the exceptional quality of the product and on the company's complete control over the whole production and distribution cycle, from mining to processing, logistics, shipping and distribution to the final user world-wide as well as reprocessing and recycling. The industrial success story also benefited from the support of its controlling shareholder, Jebsen & Jessen Family Enterprise, a true master of entrepreneurial partnerships. But how did the Jebsen & Jessen Family Enterprise's overarching legacy, values, governance, business model and growth strategy contributed to the success of GMA Garnet? How will this relationship support or hamper the ambitious goals set for the company's future? What were the implications of the family firms' commitment to environmental mining practices and a circular economy in that context?
Three generations of the Rubin family gathered around the dinner table for their usual Friday evening get-together. It was a perfect opportunity to discuss everything and anything about the business, the family and the world. The discussion quickly turned to the changing channels available to consumers. There had been many radical shifts before, and the family relished its agility and ability to regenerate itself regularly. Stephen's parents had arrived in Liverpool on ships from Eastern Europe and in 1932 set up a shoe wholesaler. Later, the Rubin family ventured into shoe manufacturing, first locally then became one of the first European companies to outsource production to Asia. Savvy investments, like the acquisition and divestment of a majority stake in Reebok, financially enabled them to progressively build a unique collection of sport brands, such as Speedo, Ellesse, Berghaus, Canterbury, Mitre and others. But venturing into retail with JD Sports Fashion was a radical departure from the family's B2B roots, and they still had to figure out all the implications of the move. Other topics of discussion included how digitalization and big data would impact the future of Pentland, the impact of global political shifts and the family generational transition, with the 2nd generation turning 80.
Singapore, Sept 2016. For the Jebsen and Jessen families, Asia had been an adopted land for over 120 years, not counting the years their ancestors, as Danish seafarers, had plied the treacherous Asian waters. In 1895, two of them had set roots in Hong Kong and established a first trading house, one of the original foreign Hongs in the colony. From those modest beginnings emerged a powerful group with over US$4.5 billion in sales and over 7,700 employees, with four principal entities: Jebsen & Co., based in Hong Kong; Jebsen & Jessen (SEA), based in Singapore; Jebsen & Jessen Hamburg, their global trading house; and GMA Garnet, the world leader in mining, processing, distributing and recycling of industrial garnet. The family enterprise survived many near-death experiences because of wars and revolutions, progressively evolving from a pure trading house, first establishing themselves as partners of choice for leading global companies such as Porsche or Demag, then having greater involvement along the value chain through vertical integration and diversifying their geographic footprint into frontier markets such as Indonesia and Myanmar. For the third generation, the future looked promising, but history had taught the family never to rest on its laurels. The governance structure meant that ownership and control were concentrated in a limited number of hands. Would the current leaders be able to identify, groom and incentivize those from the next generation? How could they keep the family at large involved? From the business side, how far should vertical integration and geographical diversification be pushed? How should they react to the recent slowdown in China? Was there a natural limit to CSR activities?