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Under the slogan “We work for a better society”, around 300 youngsters from entrepreneur families of all Spain met last weekend in Santiago de Compostela.

 

Santiago de Compostela, April 4^th, 2022. Sustainability, innovation, and commitment are the three pillars around which has pivoted the 18^th National Encounter of the Family Forum, which gathered, in Santiago de Compostela last weekend, around 300 young members of entrepreneur families from all over Spain, organized by the Institute of Family Business and the Galician Association of Family Business, with the collaboration of Deloitte and Banco Santander.

The encounter, under the slogan “We work for a better society”, has served as a scene to reassert the commitment of the new generations of family businesses with the daily implementation of ESG standards that address the environmental effects of a company, their impact on the social environment and their communities, as well as the best corporate governance practices, which relate, among other things, to the composition and diversity of a company’s Board of Directors, public communication transparency policies or codes of conduct.

 

The meeting held in Santiago also provides this group of young entrepreneurs a greater understanding of the challenges posed by a family business, being at the same time a venue for mutual acquaintance and exchange of personal and business experiences among the future leaders of the Spanish family enterprises.

On Friday afternoon, the participants in the encounter visited FINSA facilities (Financiara Maderera), a Galician family business dedicated to the wood realm since 1931, which tops 830 million euros in sales and has placed sustainability as the main pillar of its strategy.

 

 

The “Good Santiago Pilgrimage”

The academic session, conducted by the Galician journalist Gladys Vázquez, started on Saturday with the welcoming speech of Inés Rovira, Director of AATT and of the Business Family Institute Forum, who reminded the assisting youngsters that the reunion was a good opportunity to take a time to listen and reflect on “how to work for a better, more modern, technological and human society”. Meanwhile, José Juan Pérez Tabernero, Institutional Relations Director of Santander España advocated for the legacy of the linage family entrepreneurs “to whom we owe the current Spain’s prosperity and stated that “when in addition to taking business ventures you risk your own patrimony, you become a true entrepreneur”. Fernando Vázquez Castro, associate of the family business, Deloitte, noted how the pandemic has taught us about the fragility of everything and, at the same time, has placed value on small things. Lastly, Víctor Nogueira, President of the Galician Family Business Association, compared a family enterprise with the lessons learned from “The Good Pilgrimage of Santiago”: Legacy, history, and a paradigm of how things should be done”.

The energy-technological transition the world is undertaking and the need for this process to be fair and efficient were the focus of this first academic session headed by María Victoria Zingoni, Repsol’s General Manager of Clients and Low Carbon Emissions. Zingoni underscored the critical moment experienced by the energy sector due to such peculiar circumstances as the price hike and the geopolitical situation and conveyed the compelling need to achieve a balance that encompasses the safety in supply, universal access, sustainability, and competitiveness.

 

The unstoppable digital transformation of enterprises

With the title “Technology and Business Globalization in a Sustainable World: from Conflict to Opportunity”, Patricia Riberas, Gestamp Manager of Transformation and Organization, interviewed César Cernuda, Gestamp Advisor and Global Head of NetApp. Cernuda added that the pandemic has accelerated the digital transformation of companies as part of an irreversible process; in his turn, Riberas stated that in order to approach this movement successfully, family businesses should assume an unrestricted radical cultural change.

The third session focused on the role of young CEOs in family businesses and featured the participation of Jaime Gorbeña, Bergé y Cia Executive President; Julio Iglesias, Grupo Revi Managing Director; Víctor Leal, Board of Directors member of CL Grupo Industrial, and Juan Moya, Persán Vicepresident, who talked about their experiences when taking on the management front lines at their companies. In this way, Gorbeña underscored that we need people around us who can tell us “to keep things clear and alert us when we may be going crazy”. Juan Moya emphasized the importance of having clear paradigms, passion for projects and of keeping egos below the company’s interests. Julio Iglesias indicated that when assuming the greatest responsibility, it was very important for him to know himself and rely on the teams, also to be orderly, practice good habits and have an adequate preparation. In the same way, Víctor Leal noted three aspects to worked on in a conscientious manner: compromise, generosity, and order.

 

A trip of many crashes

Gabriel Torres, Pascual Innova Director; Carlos Gómez, cofounder of 7r Ventures and Cristian Ull, cofounder of Area 101, covered in their panels the challenges faced by organizations in their corporate innovation. Torres reminded that innovation is something as easy as the generation and implementation of novel, amazing and useful ideas that create value, and that family businesses play with an advantage in the innovation field, since they have the sufficient patience to bring projects forward. Carlos Gómez, on his part, challenged the young assistants to the session to “serve as standard-bearers of their companies’ evolution because the business you will be leading are not the ones you know now.” Meanwhile, Cristian Ull revealed that innovation “is a trip of many crashes where you rectify and do things the right way”.

“Osborne 250 years. Legacy and Future”, was the title of the following round table attended by four outstanding members of this business saga: Ignacio Osborne (Grupo Osborne President), Fernando Terry (Managing Director), Rocio Osborne, (Communication and PR Manager for the Group) and Carla Terry (Institutional Relations). Ignacio Osborne cited some significant numbers of this great group: 340 stockholders, 250 years of history, six generations of managers and one family. And a lesson learned through all these years: “Priority of the business over family interests. The family is the silver medal, the company is the gold medal”.

 

Fernando Terry emphasized the vision that has inspired the family to grow the business during these two and a half centuries, while Rocío Osborne expressed that, in her opinion, Spanish family businesses “need to share our values with the international markets”. Carla Terry, on her part, specified some of the projects that the company has set in motion in order to maintain the business spirit in different members of the family branches.

 

The sixth session of the day was led by a group of Galician entrepreneurs: Emilio Froján (founding CEO of Velca), Catalina Fernández (Hifas da Terra President) and Cristina Gamallo (Founder Partner of Situm), and acting as moderator, José Miguel Alonso de Ozalla, responsible for Red de Empresas y Servicios Especializados de Santander España. José Miguel Alonso categorically declared that we are in an era of entrepreneurship in Spain. This was shared by Emilio Froján, who also revealed that “a success case consisted of millions of failures”. Cristina Gamallo, on her part, presented a case illustrating how it is possible to go from research to entrepreneurship, such as the Galician GPS for interiors used in more than 20 countries. For Catalina Fernández, innovation is a question of survival: “Fit or disappear”, she claimed.

 

The day was completed with a presentation entitled “A Story of Growth”, by Carmen Lence, CEO of Grupo Lence-Leche Río, which was presented by Fernando Vázquez Castro, a Deloitte associate responsible for family business. Vázquez reminded the assistants that “you have the privilege to receive the family business, as well as the commitment of passing on the legacy to the next generations”. Lence, in turn, made emphasis on a maxim that she says her father used to repeat: “Life is too short to live it in a mediocre way”.

 

The encounter concluded with the announcement of what will be the venue for the 19^th National Encounter of the Family Forum, to be held in 2023 in Zaragoza.

ASCEF Annual Meeting, held last November 25^th, featured the participation of Mª del Mar Nogareda, HIPRA Executive Vice-President; Joaquín Serra, NATURA BISSÉ Senior VP & CBDO, and Marc Puig, PUIG Executive President and IEF President, who talked about innovation, sustainability, generational replacement, and other topics related with the family business.

 

With Amadeu Jori, ASCEF President, as a host, Marc Puig mentioned that companies could not work only with profit maximization in mind, but needed to address their stakeholders’ demands, from clients and providers to employees and the community itself, furthering a more humane and sustainable market economy. “Something which is already innate to the family business way of doing things”, he stated

 

Puig also spoke about the company-family relation: “While a company needs hierarchy, a family needs equality. Therefore, it is important to create a system of auto-limitation for the family that help to make objective decisions”.

 

Meanwhile, Mª del Mar Nogareda explained how research and innovation are part of the HIPRA’s DNA, “we not only dedicate 10% of the income to research, but we are also nonconformists and disruptive, with very clear ideas of what we want to do and not to do”. She also talked about the great challenge it means for them, as vaccine experts, to shift from the veterinarian sector to the human sector with the new COVID vaccines they are developing.

 

According to Joaquín Serra, the companies should sustainably manage their activity. “In Natura Bissé, we not only act that way, but also invest a significant percentage of the income on our foundation, which shows how important is corporate social responsibility for us.” Regarding innovation, he specially emphasized that innovation implies principles of passion and persistence.

 

The round table about innovation was moderated by José Luis Blanco, IEF CEO.

 

The meeting also featured a lecture about the Next Generation funds by Banco Santander.

 

Inheriting a family business requires a planning combining civil, commercial and tax mechanisms. This was one of the main conclusions drawn at a session on family business succession held at the International University of Catalonia, organized by the Department of Family Business, Bosch Aymerich, at UIC Barcelona; the Catalonian Association of Family Business (ASCEF, acronym in Spanish), and the Catalonian Association of Inheritance Right Experts (ACEDS, acronym in Spanish).

Several experts on succession matters discussed the main challenges faced by family business, which, in Catalonia, represent 88.3% of all private companies, contribute 69% of value added tax (VAT) and create 76% of the private sector employment.

According to ASCEF President, Amadeu Jori, “the importance of a well-planned succession, the tax aspects derived from takeovers, the corporate governance bodies, and the importance of legal security are vital points affecting the family business survival”.

Meanwhile, the Director of the Family Business Department, Bosch Aymerich, Jordi Juan, highlighted the importance of combining different tools when planning a family business succession: “It is necessary to integrate the commercial, civil and tax visions to be able to respond to the problems involved in the family business takeover”. De Juan also referred to the issue of tax litigation in family businesses.

The session also featured the intervention of Josep María Cervera, professor at Barcelona University; ACEDS President, Ramón Pratdesaba; Crowe’s partner, Ramón Santos; Ebrat Advocate’s founder, Alejandro Ebrat, and Emma Sánchez Corretger, CIM Tax & Legal partner and ACEDS Tax Counsel Coordinator.

 

Events that normally remain within the private family sphere, like marriage, divorce, conflict, generational rivalry, or death, carry great implications for family businesses. It is essential to identify, understand and foresee them in order to preserve harmony and family patrimony. These and other aspects were covered at the conference “Which Family Situations May Jeopardize the Family Business”, held last week and organized by ASCEF and Cuatrecasas.

According to Cuatrecasas, the family business needs to be aware of these situations that may affect the business project, making it necessary to think about both current and future family compositions.  It was also underscored at the conference that family, business, and ownership are three different aspects, yet linked to family unity. The business family needs to have response mechanisms in the event of these kind of situations that may put the business continuity at risk.

PwC, one of the country’s leading consultancy firms, believes that the success of the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan (RTRP) will depend on the ability to spend the pre-determined amount and multiply it with private funds, as well as the effectiveness in channelling the funds towards relevant and necessary investments for the transformation of our economy. PwC was the organiser of the conference “EUROPEAN FUNDS NEXT GENERATION”, with the participation of Ignacio Marull, partner in charge of PwC in Catalonia and Anna Merino, Strategy & Economics Director at PwC Spain.

The conference explained how the RTRP approved by the EU consists of 30 components with 110 investment plans and 102 reforms. For its part, Catalonia has its own agenda and approved the New Generation Plan with 27 distinctive projects and 50 outstanding projects.

It is estimated that Catalonia will receive more than 3,300 million in both direct aid and soft loans.
Some of the components will have an indirect impact on companies through public employment, while others will provide direct aid in the form of subsidies for the modernisation and digitalisation of the business fabric.
The event was attended by a large number of Ascef members and counted with the participation of Amadeu Jori, President of Ascef.

 

The education of family business stockholders is essential for the good performance of the family business, and it is fundamental that current and future owners have the necessary knowledge.  Under this premise, the Catalonian Family Business Association (ASCEF) successfully organized a new edition of the family business stockholding partner education program, led by experts from the law office Cuatrecasas.

The session was conceived with the purpose of providing tools of knowledge that could help develop their stockholder role with responsibility, since in order to reach the levels of excellence and good governance in the family business it is necessary that partners carry out their roles with knowledge and rigor.  The quality of decision making will depend on the knowledge and information provided to company members. Eventually, investment of resources on the education of stockholding partners helps gain the family business members’ interest and involvement in the company.

This is why it is fundamental to convey to successive generations the importance of protecting the family and business legacy and that this interest in education be transmitted to next generations as an element inherent to the responsibility of every family business partner, whether involved or not in management.

This session was divided into three differentiated parts: stockholding partners rights and duties, legacy protection in personal situations and company specific tax specifications, as well as individual partner taxation.

Last Tuesday, June 22^nd, the Catalonian Association of Family Business (ASCEF), held its General Assembly virtually attended by a wide representation of its associates.  At this event, the 2020 accounts and the 2021 budget were approved, and a record of completed activities was presented.

ASCEF President, Amadeu Jori, spoke to the organization members about the pandemic which, he said, “caused a deep, sudden and unexpected health, economic and social crisis that impacted us all with more or less severity“. For Jori, many companies have been examples of a capacity for renewal, innovation, and transformation in their quest for competitiveness, a defining trait of the family business. In the face of the economic crisis, ASCEF President highlighted the importance of private-public collaboration and the need to convey these messages to public administrations.

The Assembly ended with a lecture by Pablo Foncillas, business innovation educator and researcher, who spoke about consuming trends and digital transformation.

Professor Pablo Foncillas, educator, independent counselor, and business innovation researcher was invited to participate in the XXIII Associate General Assembly of the Catalonian Family Business Association (ASCEF), virtually held last Tuesday, June 22^nd. The Professor took part with a lecture about digital transformation entitled Consuming Trends: 66 days for world resetting.

In relation to the title and the reference to 66 days, Foncillas explained that “it is the total number of days that takes us to get used to a new habit“, according to new research elaborating on previous studies done in the 70s, which had set a habit acquiring period at 21 days, “without specifying that such processe starts after 21 days.”

“Regarding the concept of digital transformation, made up by two concepts, company owners, executives, mid-ranking managers and workers get obsessed with the word ‘digital’, while the future of our businesses lies in the word ‘transformation’,” he stated.

Professor Foncillas underscored the importance of “unifying the online and offline worlds, a path that enhances the life of professionals“. In this way, the speaker noted that last year had served as an accelerator for this digital transformation, illustrating that “e-commerce has grown during the first lockdown weeks as much as in the previous ten years.”

Throughout his lecture, Pable Foncillas covered topics related to digital transformation, such as the end of property as we know it, and how transformation affects the retail sector or ESG (environmental, social, governance) criteria.

Given that we have less than ten years to reach the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) established in the United Nations 2030 Agenda, this organization appeal to all sectors of society to spring into action to end poverty, protect the planet and improve people’s lives and aspirations in this world.

ASCEF is an organization committed to sustainable development policies understood as the way to satisfy todays’ needs without compromising the capabilities of future generations. To that end, it promotes different education and information events seeking to raise awareness in all its associates given the need to harmonize three basic elements: economic growth, social inclusion, and environmental protection. In this way, the Association has joined the 2030 Agenda Commission of Forment del Treball, whose purpose is to promote this world action program.

At an educational level, during this quarter, ASCEF associates took part in a meeting about transformation and sustainability scheduled within the conference series “The Family Business Shares”, organized by Territorial Associations of Family Business, and attended a conference by the CSR specialist Silvia Urarte, to discuss the alignment of the referred SDG with companies’ operations.

• “We reinforce our values through protocols in order to ensure success in business successions and continuity”
• The Ophthalmology Institute Fernández-Vega takes part in the second session of “The Family Business Shares” conference series

The conference series “The Family Business Shares“, organized by Family Business Territorial Associations including the Catalonian Family Business Association (ASCEF), has held a new online session attended by the prestigious  ophthalmologists of the Fernández-Vega family, Professor Luis Fernández-Vega and his son, Doctor Luis Fernández-Vega Cueto-Felguerosoen; a webinar that was moderated by the journalist Ana Samboal.

The main goal of “The Family Business Shares” series  is to share and learn about new trends in family business management, hand in hand with family business leaders at domestic and international levels, as it is the case of the Instituto Oftalmológico Fernández-Vega, main participant in this edition. With a trajectory of 135 years through five generations of specialists, the Fernández-Vega family maintains its legacy handing down through generations what they call CICACOA, Spanish acronym for science, love, comprehension, and spirit.

The company as a necessity
Being an entrepreneur was not in Fernández-Vega’s plans, but the high demand from patients forced them to expand and gradually increase their employee volume becoming more professionalized. As Luis Fernández-Vega Cueto-Felgueroso points out: “the medical calling always prevails. That is clear to us. However, it is true that at home we felt that we needed to be prepared for what was coming upon us, there was a business task behind“. Since its origins in 1886, they made a clear bet on international education, something that contributes to the business itself thanks to the knowledge base it provides.

The Instituto Oftalmológico Institute Fernández-Vega was recently recognized by MRS, leading healthcare ranking in Spain, as the country’s best private ophthalmology center, where almost every month tempting offers are heard and never examined, since there is something more valuable for this family: “We have our own values, and that is very difficult to measure. Being part of a different group may make us lose our identity, the reason of being of our institution. That is what has led us where we are“. 

Succession protocols
Protocols play a fundamental role in the family business operation governing aspects like incorporation of new company members, shareholder structuring and succession plans. “In order to be a shareholder, you need to work at the company and meet certain requirements. So, we currently have three shareholders, even though there are more family members at the company, and that helps us make decisions“, affirms Professor Luis Fernández-Vega.

They also have a family protocol dictating how to train a family ophthalmologist willing to participate in the business, how many years he should work abroad or how management should be professionalized. The limit age to perform surgery has been set at 75 years old, as senior Luis indicates: “one must leave places amid applause not boos. You cannot deny reality and you must know when to quit, and if conditions are not optimum, you cannot be a burden for the organization“.

The Family Business Shares
In joint collaboration and providing value to more than 1,200 associated family enterprises, all the network of Family Business Territorial Associations takes part in the conference series “The Family Business Shares” sponsored by Credit Suisse, an entity committed to the needs and realities of family enterprises.

The Family Business Territorial Associations constitute a non-profit network born to support and advocate for family enterprises in Spain, which seeks to contribute to their development and strengthening. Standing out among its main goals is to be an institutional, business, and social reference for the family business reality in each autonomous region. These associations are linked to the Family Business Institute (IEF), the Family Business Network (FBN) and the European Family Business (EFB).

They encompass over 1,100 family companies related to production operations that share family business values such as stability and tenacity (long term vision), commitment (to new generations, employment, and sustainability) as well as entrepreneurial and hard work culture.