Page 31 - Forbes - Asia (June 2018)

he added more cocoa and cocoa butter to sample competitors’ products. Where dil- was at that time the head of the European
the mix. hen, when the Italian govern- igence wasn’t enough, he turned to faith, integration process,” Giovanni recalls. So
ment moved to regulate the use of super- installing statues of the Madonna of of the boys went. “Personal was always
latives in advertising—potentially putting Lourdes to watch over Ferrero factories subordinate to the company,” he says.
the name Supercrema in peril—he chose around the globe. Giovanni studied marketing in the
to rebrand. His team pondered a label By the time he handed the reins to his U.S., then started work at Ferrero in the
that would evoke the lavor of hazelnuts sons in 1997, the once tiny operation had 1980s. His irst assignment placed him
in languages across many markets. Ulti- become a heavyweight with roughly $4.8 with Tic Tac in Belgium. Later he moved
mately, they landed on Nutella and began billion in annual sales. to a managerial role in Germany before
learning business development in Brazil,
Argentina, Mexico and the U.S.
Along the way Giovanni mastered
the technical minutiae needed to run the
irm. He now speaks in streams of cor-
porate jargon (“dimensional thresholds,”
“growth momentum,” “focalization”) in-
lected with arcane data. Still, sales and
marketing were a more natural it for
him. hin, well-dressed and with a dis-
arming giggle, he has more the air of a
game-show host than a billionaire facto-
ry owner. He is also the author of seven
novels, many of which are set in Africa.
When the topic comes up, he darts of to
collect a copy of his latest, he Light Hunt-
er, which is dedicated to his father.
Giovanni’s creativity made him an ef-
fective counterpart to his brother, Pietro,
who gravitated to operations. Together, in
1997, they took over as CEO from their
father, who remained chairman. For the
next dec ade and a half, they focused on
boosting Ferrero’s in-house brands.
But in 2011, while biking in South Af-
rica, Pietro died of a heart attack, the
same fate as his grandfather and great-un-
cle, leaving his wife, three children and
Hazelnuts cascade onto Ferrero Rocher pralines in Alba, Italy. The plant produces 1,100 tons Ferrero behind. Giovanni was forced to
of sweets every day. run day-to-day afairs by himself. “[It]
was a big discontinuity,” he says. Four
shipping jars under the new moniker in PRACTICALLY FROM BIRTH, Giovan- years later, Michele died, too, at age 89.
April 1964. ni Ferrero was groomed to be chocolate More than 10,000 people reportedly at-
Ferrero’s expansion rolled on to Swit- royalty. In the late 1970s he and his broth- tended his funeral in Alba.
zerland and Ireland and as far as Ecua- er were shipped of to a Belgian boarding he deaths sparked numerous
dor, Australia and Hong Kong. New prod- school, ostensibly to protect them from It- changes at Ferrero. To start, the busi-
ucts were introduced at a steady clip: the aly’s Years of Lead, in which high-proile ness, which Michele had owned out-
Kinder line in 1968, Tic Tac in 1969, Fer- igures (including John Paul Getty III and right, was divided among the family. He
rero Rocher pralines in 1982. By 1986, an- Italy’s former prime minister Aldo Moro) le the majority to Giovanni, since he
nual sales reached 926 billion lira, about were kidnapped for ransom. But their fa- felt that consolidated ownership would
$1.5 billion in current dollars. ther had an additional motivation. He ofer more stability. he rest went to Piet-
As the company grew, Michele le knew that Europe was quickly moving to- ro’s young heirs, whose stakes remain in
nothing to chance. In one case, he iled a ward a single market, and he needed heirs trust. Ferrero’s nominal president, Maria
patent for Mon Chéri in Arabic to thwart comfortable anywhere on the continent. Franca Fissolo—Michele’s onetime sec-
knockofs, and from his home in Mona- “It was the irst historical age of Fer- retary and later his wife —received no
co he o en popped into retail stores to rero being a European company. Brussels shares, though she inherited other assets

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