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Case Study

Jebsen & Jessen Family Enterprise: A Hong from the cold

By Benoit F. Leleux and Marta Widz

22 pages

December 2016

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Reference: IMD-7-1859

Singapore, Sept 2016. For the Jebsen and Jessen families, Asia had been an adopted land for over 120 years, not counting the years their ancestors, as Danish seafarers, had plied the treacherous Asian waters. In 1895, two of them had set roots in Hong Kong and established a first trading house, one of the original foreign Hongs in the colony. From those modest beginnings emerged a powerful group with over US$4.5 billion in sales and over 7,700 employees, with four principal entities: Jebsen & Co., based in Hong Kong; Jebsen & Jessen (SEA), based in Singapore; Jebsen & Jessen Hamburg, their global trading house; and GMA Garnet, the world leader in mining, processing, distributing and recycling of industrial garnet. The family enterprise survived many near-death experiences because of wars and revolutions, progressively evolving from a pure trading house, first establishing themselves as partners of choice for leading global companies such as Porsche or Demag, then having greater involvement along the value chain through vertical integration and diversifying their geographic footprint into frontier markets such as Indonesia and Myanmar. For the third generation, the future looked promising, but history had taught the family never to rest on its laurels. The governance structure meant that ownership and control were concentrated in a limited number of hands. Would the current leaders be able to identify, groom and incentivize those from the next generation? How could they keep the family at large involved? From the business side, how far should vertical integration and geographical diversification be pushed? How should they react to the recent slowdown in China? Was there a natural limit to CSR activities?

Learning Objective

Managing fast growth
Governing the family business
Succession management
Venturing
Entrepreneurship in the family business
Managing partnerships
Vertical integration
Portfolio diversification
Frontier markets
Stewardship
Values and ethics

Keywords

Family Business, Governance, Entrepreneurship, Venturing, Trading, Partnership, Trust, Succession, Growth Management, Distribution Management, Vertical Integration, Corporate Governance

Settings

South-Eastern Asia
GMA Garnet Group, Jebsen and Jessen, Manufacturing, Industrial Goods, Consumer Goods, Luxury Goods and Jewelry, Manufacturing
Time frame: 1895-2016

Type

Field Research

Available Languages

English

Related material

Teaching note, Video

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Selected for the 2020 Schlesinger Global Family Enterprise Case Competition

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