Pursuits
Alpine Takeover Tussle Exposes Risks of Swiss Family Companies
- Investors balk at proposed deal by Sika founder's heirs
- Mother's blessing for a sale unleashes a torrent of trouble
Urs Burkard.
Photographer: Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty ImagesThis article is for subscribers only.
Before she died in 2013, Franziska Burkard-Schenker told her son he could sell the Swiss chemical maker her grandfather founded in 1910, as long as it didn’t happen in her lifetime. She couldn’t have known the torrent of trouble such a sale would unleash.
Twelve months after her death at age 84, her son Urs Burkard told Sika AG’s board of directors that the family had agreed to sell its 16 percent stake in the company to France’s Cie de Saint-Gobain for $2.8 billion. Under Sika’s shareholding rules, a purchaser can buy the family’s minority stake -- which carries a majority of its voting rights -- without offering the same deal to other shareholders.