Insider held a roundtable at our Birmingham office with the heads of leading family-run businesses. In a wide ranging conversation they covered issues such as long term strategy, succession planning culture and developing the next generation. Here are some of their key thoughts.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00I'm Kurt Jacobs, the editor of Midlands Business Insider. I've just done a fascinating round
00:15table on family businesses. Let's see some of the key thoughts of those taking part.
00:21I'm Jacob Cork. I'm a partner here at TLT, specialising in advising families to transfer
00:26their wealth to the next generation. What I thought was really interesting today was
00:31some discussion about the distinctions between the family as an ownership vehicle and the
00:36treatment of the workforce as a family, and how they see it as a big community, but that
00:41you have to treat them both very slightly differently.
00:43I'm Joe Tipper. I work as director of Tipper's Building Materials in the Midlands. We've
00:48been a fifth generation business. I think the most important thing is the difference
00:53to society that running a long-term business makes, and the value that that has outside
00:58of just making a profit. The way we look after our staff, the way we look after our business
01:02investment in return, makes us an incredibly important part of Midlands and greater, wider
01:09UK society.
01:10I'm Matthew Harvey, corporate partner at TLT Solicitors. Very enjoyable discussion this
01:15morning around family businesses. The takeaway this morning is cultural behaviours, the way
01:20that they are a massive positive for that sector of the industry, and how successful
01:25they can become.
01:26My name's Tim Guidotti, and I'm the MD of Fidotti Motor Services in West Brom, fleet
01:31maintenance provider, and established for 48 years. My key takeaway from today is that
01:37basically the values that we have as a business need to be transferred through the generations
01:43and into our staff, and we need to document it and record it.
01:47I'm Tom Williams, managing director at Coin & Drink Ltd. So we're a vending and refreshment
01:52provider to businesses around the West Midlands. My one key takeaway from this morning is really
01:57understanding that other businesses have the similar struggles to us, but documenting those
02:02struggles and sharing them.
02:04Hi, I'm Victoria Tamble of Oberstland, and I deliver commercial development projects.
02:14And the one thing that I've learned from today is that all of these businesses that
02:19we've met, as fascinating as they all are, have the family feel, whether it's people
02:23that share genes with them, or people that are part of the staff, they're all part of
02:27the wider family.