Family
Business Magazine E-Newsletter
January
15, 2008
Contents
1.
Freedom Communications postpones plans to buy out partners.
2.
Comcast to pay founder's salary after his death.
3.
Ridley Scott to direct film about Gucci family.
4.
Seattle Times to undergo
'difficult and painful downsizing.'
5.
Rules for fair family fights.
6.
Charting a course for the senior generation.
1. Freedom Communications postpones
plans to buy out partners. Freedom Communications, the
family-controlled company that owns the Orange County Register and more
than 30 other papers as well as eight television stations, has
postponed its plan to buy back a 45% stake in the company from two
private-equity firms, Blackstone Group LP and Providence Equity
Partners, the Wall Street Journal
reported. Freedom had planned to fund the $500 million purchase by
borrowing the money, the article said. "Some banks were leery of
lending money to Freedom, in part because of uncertainties facing the
newspaper industry, and Freedom also faced higher borrowing costs," the
Journal reported. The Hoiles
family sold the stake in Freedom in 2004 to buy out dissident family
members, the report noted. Providence and Blackstone "have the right to
sell their stake back to Freedom by May 2009, setting a deadline for
when some sort of deal must be negotiated," according to the
article. (Source: Wall Street
Journal, Dec. 27, 2007.)
Return
to the top.
2. Comcast to pay founder's salary
after his death. Under the terms of a contract extension
with one of its founders, Ralph J. Roberts, Comcast Corp. has agreed to
pay Roberts' beneficiary "an amount equal to his 2007 salary for five
years after his death," the Philadelphia
Business Journal reported. Roberts, 87, is the chairman of the
Comcast board's executive and finance committees and the father of
Brian J. Roberts, Comcast's chairman, president and CEO. "According to
the agreement, Roberts' beneficiary can be one or more individuals,
trusts or other entities," the article said. "If it consists of
multiple people or entities, his salary will be divided among them."
While the company hasn't disclosed Roberts' 2007 salary, his 2006 base
salary was $1.85 million, the newspaper reported. His total
compensation for 2006 was $24.1 million, the article said.
(Source: Philadelphia Business
Journal, Dec. 31, 2007.)
Return
to the top.
3. Ridley Scott to direct film about
Gucci family. Fox 2000 Pictures will produce a film about
the Gucci fashion dynasty, to be directed by Ridley Scott, Variety reported. "Fox 2000 got
the project after Paramount Pictures put it in turnaround," the article
said. The film will focus on the Gucci family and its business in the
1970s and 1970s, when Maurizio Gucci, grandson of founder Guccio Gucci,
"emerged as the unlikely winner of a bloody power struggle to run the
family business," according to the report. Maurizio was shot to death
outside his Milan apartment in 1995. (Source: Variety, Dec. 3, 2007.)
Return
to the top.
4. Seattle
Times to undergo 'difficult and painful downsizing.'
The Seattle Times will lay
off 17 employees (all but one in circulation), cut 69 more jobs through
attrition, stop publishing a Sunday tabloid news section and make other
cuts to save $21 million, the newspaper reported. In late December,
publisher Frank Blethen issued a memo to employees warning that the
company will undergo "the most difficult and painful downsizing" in its
history in 2008, the Seattle Times
report said. The memo said the Seattle Times Co.'s print revenue is
expected to drop by a total of $33 million for 2007 and 2008; it said
$27 million in cost reductions -- $6 million more than the cuts just
announced -- was needed to "ensure stability" in 2008, the Times reported. Blethen, whose
family owns 50.5% of the company (the McClatchy newspaper chain owns
the rest), wrote that his family's options are to sell the paper, close
the business or make it smaller and more focused. "For better or
worse, my family has chosen door number three," he wrote, according to
the report. In a Seattle Weekly article,
Brian Miller speculated that the cost cuts could be part of a move by
Blethen "to win back total ownership." An analyst at Ariel Capital
Management, which owns a stake in McClatchy, told Miller, "Under the
right circumstances, [McClatchy] would be willing to sell the minority
stake." The savings from Blethen's cost cuts could help him raise the
money to buy back McClatchy's stake, Miller surmised. (Source: Seattle Times, Jan. 9, 2008, Dec.
28, 2007; Seattle Weekly,
Jan. 9, 2008.)
Return
to the top.
5. Rules for fair family fights.
A "good" fight helps family members to learn what matters most to each
other, writes family business adviser Ellen Frankenberg in The Family Business Conflict Resolution
Handbook. "It isn't pain and conflict that you want to avoid,"
she notes, "it's the unnecessary emotional pain of unresolved
conflict." Frankenberg's article offers ten "rules for fair fights."
Here are four of them:
- No
name-calling or put-downs. (The purpose of a fight is to resolve an
issue, not demean each other.)
- Confront
each other by describing the facts (which are not debatable) and then
by naming personal feelings (which are also not debatable). Example:
"When you showed up an hour late for a meeting with our best customer,
I was really angry."
- No
fighting in front of employees. (Or children or customers or bankers.)
- Keep your
fights up to date. (Don't keep rehashing the same past failures as
weapons, regardless of the current issue.)
For more advice
on achieving consensus in your family and your company, see The Family Business Conflict Resolution
Handbook. Learn more about the book and see the table of
contents here.
Return
to the top.
6. Charting a course for the senior
generation. Over the last century, the average American's
life span rose 30 years, and family business advisers are seeing more
instances of three generations of family members working together in a
family business, according to a report by Sharon Nelton in the current
issue of Family Business Magazine.
While senior-generation members' wisdom and experience can offer
benefits to a family firm, there are downsides and challenges for
next-generation members, as well, Nelton writes. Here are some
suggestions for younger family members who work with their elders:
- Consider
the advantages of having members of the senior generation stay in the
business longer -- the value of their experience and their
relationships with customers, for example.
- Hire a
consultant or enroll in a family business program to help you and the
senior family members deal with issues of aging and planning for an
eventual transition.
- Help
aging but healthy family members find meaningful ways to stay connected
with the family business, if that is their desire.
- Be honest
with yourself and with a senior family member who won't relinquish the
reins. If you find it unacceptable to wait another ten years before
taking over, perhaps it's time for you to move on.
- Begin to
plan now for your own extended life.
For
suggestions for older family members, plus news and advice on
shareholder liquidity, wealth management, asset protection and more,
see the Winter 2008 issue of Family
Business Magazine. Visit our website for subscription information.
Return to the top.
Do you know anyone who would like to
receive this free e-newsletter? Enter the e-mail address here.
Is your e-mail address changing?
Unsubscribe your old address and subscribe your new one here.
Quick
Links:
The
Family Business Conflict Resolution Handbook
Building
Strong Family Teams
Family
Business Magazine
No longer want to receive this e-newsletter?
Unsubscribe here.