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.”
HEAVY TOLL: The closure of the plants, which produced 56 percent of Feng Tay’s shoes last year, followed similar shutdowns in India, its second-biggest production base Feng Tay Enterprises Co Ltd (豐泰), a supplier for Nike Inc, on Saturday temporarily shut down four factories in Vietnam, its biggest manufacturing base, for about a week amid COVID-19 lockdowns, it said yesterday. Feng Tay is the latest in a slew of local manufacturers with operations in Vietnam that have suspended operations as the country grapples with its worst outbreak of COVID-19. Pou Chen Corp (寶成工業), the world’s largest manufacturer of branded athletic and casual footwear, last week said that it had suspended operations at its plant in Ho Chi Minh City, as virus restrictions shuttered factories in the business hub
Taiwan should protect its vaccine supply chain and invest in vaccine development after seeing how the COVID-19 pandemic has inflicted tremendous social and economic losses worldwide, Sanofi Pasteur Hong Kong & Taiwan general manager Philip Ho said in an interview this week. “When you look at the trillions of dollars that countries have lost, parents who are forced to stay at home with their children and various restrictions imposed following a nationwide lockdown, we really see what we are losing compared with what we can benefit from vaccination,” Ho said. While the government has been trying to secure vaccines since the middle
The next target for China’s cybersecurity crackdown is to be the pools of data collected by the latest generation of vehicles. This approach risks Beijing shooting itself in the foot, and jeopardizing its ambitious plans to lead the global race for electric and autonomous vehicles. China wants to have control over the information vehicles have about their drivers, the roads they traverse, and the faces and voices they pass, according to a draft law on data-security management for the automotive industry issued in May. It seeks to ensure manufacturers across the auto supply chain keep data in the country and pass
Yang Ming Marine Transport Corp (陽明海運) is to use NT$16 billion (US$570.4 million) of its NT$29 billion in newly raised capital to lower its debt-to-asset ratio to less than 60 percent, it said yesterday. The container shipping company’s assets and liabilities were NT$208.85 billion and NT$146.4 billion respectively as of the end of March, indicating a debt-to-asset ratio of 70 percent, company data showed. Its major rivals had lower debt ratios. As of March 31, Evergreen Marine Corp (長榮海運) reported a debt-to-asset ratio of 61.6 percent, while Wan Hai Lines Ltd (萬海航運) had an even lower ratio of 57.4 percent. After repaying debts,
RSS