Family Companies (I)

choi

Family companies | Relative Success; There are important lessons to be learnt from the surprising resilience of family firms. Economist, Nov 1, 2014.
www.economist.com/news/leaders/2 ... mily-firms-relative

two consecutive paragraphs:

“Why have family companies defied their obituarists? * * * These days it is rare for a family boss to hand his job on to an obvious dud. Most family companies train future leaders by sending them to business schools and putting them through their paces in a succession of lower level jobs. A growing number (particularly in Germany) have become masters at moving family members from executive jobs to supervisory roles in the boardroom. An entire consulting industry exists to help families deal with the peculiar dynamics of their companies, such as managing personal conflicts and sidelining thick relations without hurting their feelings.

“Family firms’ strengths, meanwhile, are just as important today as they were in the early days of capitalism. They solve the ‘agency problem’ that Adam Smith put his finger on in ‘The Wealth of Nations’ when he argued that hired managers would never have the same ‘anxious vigilance’ in running companies as the owners. Family managers are often parsimonious: companies such as Walmart, Koch Industries and Mars & Co are famous for running a tight ship with humble headquarters, lean management and an obsession with operational efficiency. They are good at thinking in terms of generations rather than quarterly results

My comment:
(a) This is essentially a summary of a long essay (to be featured in the next posting). Read the summary or the essay, but not both. But basically, once you finish reading contents of this posting, there is no need to read the summary itself.
(b) I do not know about you, but most businesses in Taiwan have been family-owned. So this topic is intriguing to Taiwanese.
(c) “TODAY real power is rarely inherited. * * * Landed aristocrats have to climb the greasy pole if they want to wield serious influence."

greasy pole
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greasy_pole
(or grease pole or greased pole)

choi

(d) “You can happily go through a day consuming nothing but the products of family concerns: reading the New York Times (or the Daily Mail), driving a BMW (or a Ford or a Fiat), making calls on your Samsung Galaxy, munching on Mars Bars and watching Fox on your Comcast cable. * * * Roche makes long-term bets on developing pharmaceuticals; the Murdochs and Newhouses have stuck with print media in difficult times.”
(i) The New York Times
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_York_Times
(founded as the "New-York Daily Times" in 1851 by journalist/politician Henry Jarvis Raymond and and former banker George Jones; In 1896 Adolph Ochs bought it and formed the New York Times Company; Arthur Hays Sulzberger married Och's daughter in 1017)
(ii) Daily Mail
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daily_Mail
(founded by Alfred Harmsworth (later Lord Northcliffe) and his brother Harold (later Lord Rothermere) in 1896, and cost a halfpenny at a time when other London dailies cost one penny; tabloid; is the UK's second biggest-selling daily newspaper after The Sun; Circulation 1,7m (March 2014))

is based in London.
(A) halfpenny (British pre-decimal coin)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halfpenny_(British_pre-decimal_coin)
(Years of minting  1672 - 1967)

* In fact the halfpenny was struck more than two millennia ago. See
3 - The Halfpenny. In Tony Clayton, Coins of England and Great Britain (abbreviation: ‘coins of the UK')
www.coins-of-the-uk.co.uk/halfp.html
* Mr Clayton’s is an online publication, not a physical book, Here is the table of contents.
www.coins-of-the-uk.co.uk/coins.html

(B) After the Decimal Day in 1971, UK minted a new halfpenny. So why did old halfpenny stop in 1967?

Old Money - Pounds, Shillings and Pence. Retrowow, undated
www.retrowow.co.uk/retro_britain/old_money/old_money.html
(“1967 appeared to be the last year in which the old coins were minted. However, the Royal Mint pulled a trick to stop people hoarding the last of the old money. All coins minted in old denominations from 1967 to 1970 were dated 1967”)
(C) US had
half cent (United States coin)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half_cent_(United_States_coin)
(1793-1857)

(iii)
(A) Milestones. BMW Group, undated
www.bmwgroup.com/e/0_0_www_bmwgr ... e/meilensteine.html
(“1916 - Establishment of BMW. BMW can trace its roots back to Karl Rapp and Gustav Otto. In 1916, the Flugmaschinenfabrik Gustav Otto company had merged into Bayerische Flugzeug-Werke AG (BFW) at government behest. Elsewhere, in 1917, the Rapp Motorenwerke company morphed into Bayerische Motoren Werke GmbH, which was duly converted into an AG (public limited company) in 1918. BMW AG subsequently transferred its engine construction operations – including the company and brand names – to BFW in 1922. The date of BFW’s founding, 6 March 1916, has therefore gone down in history as the birth-date of Bayerische Motoren Werke AG”)

* German English dictionary
* flugzeug (noun neuter; from flug + zeug): "airplane"
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Flugzeug
* flug (noun masculine): "flight (in the air)"
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Flug
* zeug (noun neuter): "gear"
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Zeug
* Bayern: “Bavaria”

(B) The Family Behind BMW. In Germany's Richest. DW, Dec 5, 2005
www.dw.de/richest-germans-the-family-behind-bmw/a-1799630
(Herbert Quandt’s children and third wife)

Herbert's third wife Johanna Quandt (1926- ; maiden name Bruhn; married Herbert in 1960 at 34) is still alive.
(C) Herbert Quandt
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Quandt
(1910 – 1982; his Dutch ancestry moved to Germany in 18th century; when his father died in 1954, his family owned about 30% of BMW; section 2 Post-war business activities: BMW was an ailing company in 1959)

(iv) Giovanni Agnelli founded the Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino (English translation: Italian Automobile Factory of Turin) in 1899. His great grandson John Elkann (1976- ; age 38) is chairman of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (which formed in 2014; Elkann was Fiat’s vice chairman at age 28); his father married and then divorced granddaughter of the founder.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Elkann
(v)
(A) F Hoffmann-La Roche AG was founded by Fritz Hoffmann-La Roche--at Basel, Switzerland--to make vitamins.
(B) Allison Connolly, Roche Founder's Family Group Loses Voting Majority as Shareholder Leaves. Bloomberg, Mar 25, 2011.
www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-2 ... r-leaves-group.html
(vi) Advance Publications
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance_Publications
(Headquarters  New York City)

was founded by SI Newhouse, Sr. See Samuel Irving Newhouse, Sr
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Irving_Newhouse,_Sr.
(1895 – 1979; born as Solomon Isadore Neuhaus in Manhattan to Meier Neuhaus, an immigrant from Belarus; In 1922, taking all his personal savings, he bought 51 percent of the Staten Island Advance for $98,000)

choi

(e) “India’s great liberalisation of the late 1990s persuaded [family companies] Tata and Mahindra & Mahindra to transform themselves.”

Mahindra & Mahindra
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahindra_%26_Mahindra
(section 1 History; Headquarters  Mumbai (Bombay))