(12-03-2021, 10:10 PM)Shiyi Wrote: [ -> ]Any FT subscriber out there that can share the full text of the article here?
This is a reprint of that article on digitpatrox.com:
Family business: Ben Keswick’s grand plans to modernise Jardine Matheson
By his mid-twenties, Ben Keswick was being groomed to run the enterprise his household has led for 5 generations in Hong Kong and changed into a $50bn pan-Asian empire.
This week, aged 48 and fewer than two years into his position as taipan — or prime boss — of Jardine Matheson, Keswick has pulled off one of many largest company restructurings within the firm’s historical past.
The deal, during which the Jardines group will purchase out the shareholders of its second-largest enterprise unit for $5.5bn, might add huge sums to the Keswicks’ multibillion-dollar fortune and that of two different households linked by marriage, the Weatheralls and the Jencks.
But it additionally presents dangers for the 190-year-old enterprise. Keswick will unwind a convoluted cross-holding construction devised by his uncle, Sir Henry Keswick, within the Nineteen Eighties to defend it from the specter of a hostile takeover. The set-up allowed the descendants of the group’s founding household to regulate an enormous conglomerate whereas holding solely about 17 per cent of the inventory.
Keswick is attempting to “modernise the enterprise at an pressing tempo” stated one confidante, an adviser to Jardines’ board.
Nevertheless, “it creates a extra typical set of dangers”, the particular person added, “the biggest being what occurs in the event that they don’t ship the numbers in two or three years”.
A canny deal for Jardines
Jardine Matheson’s dominance is felt all through Hong Kong. Its sprawling belongings within the metropolis embody a few of Hong Kong’s costliest business properties and its largest manufacturers, such because the Mandarin Oriental resort. Elsewhere, its holdings vary from Vietnam’s largest dairy producer to a small cement maker in Thailand.
Jardine Matheson’s in depth holdings in Hong Kong embody a few of the metropolis’s prime business properties, such because the Mandarin Oriental resort © Alamy
However its huge portfolio has attracted criticism. Jardines is “in round 28 completely uncorrelated sectors acquired by Henry [Keswick] over the 47 years he was on the prime of the agency, and it’s actually laborious for anybody to articulate why”, stated one adviser to the enterprise. “Beneath Ben, you’ll begin to see them handle their portfolio with a sharper deal with sectors and return on capital.”
The Keswicks have managed the group for 5 generations since Thomas Keswick, from Dumfriesshire in Scotland, married the niece of Scottish dealer William Jardine, who had began a service provider enterprise in Hong Kong to commerce tea and opium.
However maintaining the household on the helm has required some politically unpopular strikes. Jardines angered Beijing within the mid-Nineteen Nineties when Henry Keswick relocated its Hong Kong inventory market itemizing to Singapore amid considerations in regards to the territory after its handover to China in 1997.
Keswick inherited the chairmanship from his uncle, Henry, who retired aged 80. “Ben is a consensus chief the place Henry was a conviction chief,” stated one particular person near the enterprise.
Henry Keswick, former chairman of Jardine Matheson, and the fourth technology of Keswicks to regulate the conglomerate
Henry — who has been described by the FT as a “tall, round-faced Outdated Etonian with a courtly air and a mischievous sense of humour” — didn’t have any kids, leading to a succession battle that pitted Ben in opposition to his cousin, Adam, a board director of Jardines.
“I’m positive Adam was upset however I haven’t seen any issues between the 2,” stated an govt who advises the board. “They’ve an excellent working relationship and collectively have masterminded the restructuring.”
The overhaul has to this point been considered positively by the market. Shares within the group rose 15 per cent after the announcement and have continued to climb.
“It was definitely an excellent deal for Jardine Matheson,” stated Hugh Younger, Asia head of Aberdeen Commonplace, whose stake in Jardine Strategic shall be purchased out at $33 a share. “It was arguably price much more”.
future proof a conglomerate
Keswick is considered by allies and individuals who know him as each “brilliant” and “paranoid”.
“He has a powerful sense of obligation to the corporate but in addition is aware of their historical past can not outline it,” stated one ally.
In frequent together with his uncle, stated pals, Keswick has not made a taboo of the corporate’s position within the Sino-British opium wars. Each have approached constructing a relationship with China — which is essential to Jardines’ future in Hong Kong — by being upfront about their household’s previous.
“We’ve got had lengthy discussions about Jardines’ historical past within the opium commerce,” stated the chairman of a serious monetary companies agency who has labored with the group for some years. “[Ben] doesn’t take himself too critically in these discussions.”
Keswick, who lives in Hong Kong together with his spouse, Martha, and 4 kids, is “intensely non-public”, in keeping with one good friend. He has by no means given a media interview.
Now, his largest problem is future-proofing Jardine after a big hit to its property and resort portfolio throughout the pandemic and following two years of political disaster in Hong Kong, the place it makes greater than a 3rd of revenues.
Really helpful
He has made quite a lot of decisive strikes since taking up in 2019. Amongst them was appointing a “recent blood” board that features Stuart Gulliver, the previous chief govt of HSBC, and Anne O’Riordan, ex-head of life sciences at Accenture, who has been tasked with overhauling the digital technique of Jardines and its portfolio corporations. Beforehand, its board was dominated by former executives of the corporate and relations.
Keswick has additionally created Jardine’s first funding committee, quashing a cultural hangover from his uncle’s tenure that meant the chairman had remaining management of all funding choices. This week, he additionally introduced a strategic funding partnership with Chinese language non-public fairness agency Hillhouse Capital.
In a 2016 article in Jardines’ firm journal, Thistle, he wrote about his ambitions for bringing the enterprise into the twenty first century. “As soon as we have now taken that first step, there isn’t any wanting again . . . We simply have to face the long run and provides it a go.”
5 years on, the way forward for one in all Hong Kong’s oldest enterprise empires is squarely in his palms.