Family
Business Magazine E-Newsletter
November
20, 2007
Contents
1.
Washington Post CEO separating from his wife.
2.
Opera singer from Bancroft family chosen to serve on News Corp. board.
3.
BMW's Quandt family to research Nazi ties.
4.
Achieving unity in a large family.
5.
Creating a great place to work.
1. Washington Post CEO separating
from his wife. Donald E. Graham, chairman and CEO of the
Washington Post Co., has announced that he is separating from Mary
Wissler Graham, his wife of 40 years. The announcement made no mention
of plans for divorce. Graham, 62, who succeeded his mother, the late
Katharine Graham, as Post Co. CEO in 1991 and as chairman in 1993, gave
94,300 of the company's non-voting shares, worth about $77 million, to
his wife in October, the Washington
Post reported. Some of the shares was placed into a foundation
administered by Mary Graham, the article said. Earlier in October,
Donald Graham, whose family controls the company through two classes of
stock, had converted nearly 400,000 non-voting shares, worth about $325
million, into shares that can be sold on the open market, according to
the Post. Post Co. vice
president Ann McDaniel said the news "will have no impact on the
company," according to the Post
report. (Source: Washington
Post, Nov. 10, 2007.)
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2. Opera singer from Bancroft family
chosen to serve on News Corp. board. Natalie Bancroft, a
27-year-old opera singer living in Europe, has been chosen by her
family to serve on the board of News Corp., which is buying the
Bancrofts' Dow Jones & Co. and the Wall Street Journal. The Bancroft
family argued over the choice, the Journal
reported. "For many in the Bancroft family, sending a representative to
News Corp.'s board was a way of easing the pain in deciding to sell
[the company]...," the article said. "Some within the family were
embarrassed that they had appeared indecisive and fractious during the
acquisition process, and wanted to send a message by making a choice
that indicated their respect for journalistic ideals. Instead, their
deliberations misfired." The family, according to the report, argued so
much that it "missed an initial 30-day deadline under which it was
permitted to nominate its own candidate for News Corp.'s approval,
thereby contractually ceding the choice to Dow Jones's prospective
owner, News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch.... While Mr. Murdoch didn't
impose a choice on the family, he eventually did limit whom he would
consider, vetoing one candidate and deflecting another by asking that
the Bancrofts choose a woman." Natalie Bancroft "had deep reservations
about selling the family business to [Murdoch]," the Journal reported, though she
"hasn't been an active player in her family's stewardship of Dow Jones
and didn't directly participate in any of the family meetings about the
sale." Her nomination must be approved by the other News Corp.
directors. According to a Reuters report, Murdoch said of the
Bancrofts, "They're a funny family, and they couldn't decide between
themselves who to nominate, and that's about all I can say."
(Sources: Wall Street Journal,
Nov. 7, 2007; Reuters, Nov. 7, 2007.)
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3. BMW's Quandt family to research
Nazi ties. In a documentary aired on German public
television about the Quandt family, who control automaker BMW,
survivors of Nazi concentration camps described the use of slave labor
at Accumulatorenfabrik, a battery company owned by patriarch Gunther
Quandt and his son Herbert, Business
Week reported. The survivors described "atrocities and deaths"
at the factory, which made batteries for Nazi rockets. "In response,
the long-reclusive family, worth $34 billion, says it will fund
research on the role" of Gunther and Herbert, both now deceased, who
were not prosecuted at Nurenberg because of lack of evidence, the
report said. "Like many other German companies, BMW, which the film
does not implicate, long ago opened its wartime archives and
contributed to funds for forced-labor survivors," the Business Week article said.
(Source: Business Week, Oct.
29, 2007.)
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to the top.
4. Achieving unity in a large family.
"As families and their enterprises become more complex, the planning
process must address the interests of individual family members across
generations," writes family business adviser Mike Cohn in The Family Business Policies &
Procedures Handbook. "This is particularly important when the
senior generation is no longer involved in day-to-day management of the
business." Cohn lists seven issues that a family in such a situation
must address. Here are three of them:
- Outline an ownership plan for major family
assets. Succession requires family members to assume and
exercise ownership responsibilities, understand risks and make informed
decisions about transitions. Change (planned or not) is difficult, but
if the family's vision and goals are to be implemented, everyone must
practice doing things differently in order to prepare for future
responsibilities.
- Create a structure to support family goals.
A family council, representing different generations and/or
family lines, can provide a forum for addressing specific needs:
balancing family and business interests, coordinating governance of
financial assets and supporting the development of individual family
members.
- Provide exit options. When people
feel trapped in a rigid system, they often expend significant effort
trying to get out. But when a system provides options to exit, invest
differently, etc., relatives tend to focus their efforts on individual
development or on enhancing the collective interests of all family
branches.
For more tips,
see The Family Business Policies
& Procedures Handbook. Learn more about the book and see the
table of contents here.
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5. Creating a great place to work.
All employees want to be paid competitively for their job and their
industry, but most will agree that a great place to work offers more
than just a paycheck, writes human resources consultant Allison Pratt
in Family Business Agenda, a
new annual publication from Family
Business Magazine. Pratt suggests four big-impact ideas to make
your family firm a great place to work. Most of them require no
start-up time.
- Ask employees what they want -- and give it
to them! Instead of trying to read their minds, simply ask for
their ideas about the best way to show your appreciation. Make sure the
rewards are meaningful to the person who receives them; don't take a
one-size-fits-all approach.
- Communicate with your staff. Keep
your employees informed about important developments -- even if the
news is bad. Encourage managers and employees to listen to each other.
Offer constructive feedback.
- Notice and acknowledge your employees' good
work. Recognition efforts can be very simple; a "thank you"
goes a long way.
- Institute flexible policies. Develop
family-friendly policies whenever possible.
For more tips
on recruitment, retention, developing family hiring policies and other
topics related to employment, see Family
Business Agenda. Subscribers to Family Business Magazine receive
this special publication free of charge. Visit our website for subscription information.
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