Michele Ferrero helped introduce Nutella and Kinder chocolate to the world, turning his family’s Italian confectionery business into a global giant with annual sales of about US$10 billion. Now his son, Giovanni, is charting his own path.
Net assets of Giovanni’s investment firm, CTH, last year surged 40 percent to 2.8 billion euros (US$3.3 billion), filings show.
The increase was boosted by its US$300 million purchase of Danish cookie baker Kelsen Group, an acquisition designed to help preserve Italy’s biggest fortune by investing beyond the confectionery industry.
Photo: AFP
Giovanni has “established his presence in the wider sweet packaged-food market” with CTH, said Guido Giannotta, a director of the Brussels-based firm, who helps manage the Ferrero family’s fortune.
Such a move would “represent an important de-risking solution, both in terms of product categories and geographical reach,” he added.
Like the Ferreros, many of the world’s richest individuals are diversifying their fortunes as they seek to grow wealth across generations.
Zara founder Amancio Ortega — Spain’s richest person — invested the proceeds from his clothing business Inditex SA into real estate worldwide, while Microsoft Corp cofounder Bill Gates’ holdings range from railroads to agricultural businesses to construction firms.
The Ferreros’ business began as a family pastry shop in northern Italy that used hazelnuts as a way to stretch limited cocoa supplies. After World War II, it grew into a confectionary firm, opening production facilities and offices abroad. It launched the Nutella and Kinder Chocolate and Tic Tac mints brands in the 1960s and then expanded with products including Ferrero Rocher.
CTH was created in 2016 and owns Belgian cookie maker Delacre and US candy company Ferrara in addition to Kelsen Group.
Ferrero Group — the family’s confectionery business — has also invested beyond candy, completing a US$1.3 billion deal last year for Kellogg Co’s cookies and fruit snack brands.
Giovanni, 55, is executive chairman of Ferrero Group and owns a controlling stake in the Alba, Italy-based company, which is now valued at US$23 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
It makes up the bulk of the Ferrero family’s US$32.9 billion fortune.
Investing in cookies “makes sense, as chocolate and biscuits fight for the same space in our stomachs,” said Duncan Fox, a consumer products analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence. “If you can get the right innovation, you get far greater distribution if you have exposure to both.”
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained