When a family business works well, it’s hard to beat them; and when they don’t work well, it’s hard to look away. And Market Basket is a perfect example; wildly successful, but not immune to fiery ownership and control conflict.
What can we learn from round three and their latest family feud?
First, family businesses are private businesses and they can control the flow of information. They are under no obligation to tell us anything so generally they tell us only what they want us to know, or what they want to, to manage the storyline.
What we do know is that this current fight is that it is again a battle between owners for control: and Ownership Matters.
What makes this battle different from the prior one is that it’s not between Arthurs T and his cousin Arthurs S, but rather that it’s between Arthur T and his three sibling sisters.
And this complicates the situation for three reasons.
First Arthur S and Arthur T did not have, a cordial family relationship at least publicly and this made it easy for Arthur T to position himself favorably in the battle for ownership and control against his cousin.
Second, the conflict now appears to be between Arthur T and his three sisters that helped him fund the acquisition of Arthur T’s family members 50.5 percent ownership stake of the business.
And third, these three sisters between them own 60 percent of the business. Arthur T is reported to own 28 percent.
So now to retain control, Arthur T needs to buy a larger ownership stake, in a bigger company.
This will in all likelihood this will be a situation in which it will be hard to look away, and the lesson to be learned: Ownership Matters.
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