Case Study: Massachusetts, Save the Family (and build a family asset)
Industry and Description: Manufacture, 100+yr old, $150M, Pet Supplies and Food.
Owner Challenge: 4th generation majority shareholder fired his minority shareholder niece whose was slated to be the next generation leader. This caused a complete family and business meltdown.
Noted issues: Emotions were high, their communications were polarized, everyone made efforts to be calm and understanding to maintain unity or were yelling with threats of legal actions and buyout offers. There were too many family members were involved and no real focus or ability to find a solution.
Solution: We worked to lower the emotional temperature, the pressure from this sent the current CEO to the hospital twice. We then worked to identify the source of the of their issues.. The current CEO didn’t know how to let go, the niece hadn’t been taught how to take over, there was no real governance for either the family or business to establish clear operating guidelines and communication channels, and the business was not optimally designed for their goals.
End Result: Through discussion the family came to understand what and why things had happened. The niece rejoined the business, we designed an educational path to develop her into the next CEO and a path for the current CEO to phase out into his next passion.. We created and professionalized governance for both the family and business, setting up a family counsel to structure their interaction with the business and create a dispute resolution process, showed them how to run an effective board, and added two independent directors.
Longer term per the family’s goals, we built the business into a family asset. We assessed the business from the top down: talent, process, structure, and financials. Determined areas of improvement, moved through our 5-step process to professionalize, streamline, and grow the business into the family’s transition plan. Our work reduced costs by 20%, grew the business 60% ($54M) by answering current client’s needs with new products/pricing, and developed the next leadership team poised to take over when the owner(s) decides to enact their transition.
Contact iBridge Global Partners Today
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