Organisation & Talent Advisory
Turning a Founder-Led Conglomerate into a Governed Holding Group
Redesigned the operating model and governance of a diversified family group as it moved from founder-led decisions to a professionalised holding structure ahead of succession.
The challenge
The group had grown organically over three decades into five businesses spanning trading, real estate, food and beverage, logistics and light manufacturing. Every material decision — a hire, a lease, a supplier contract above a modest threshold — still ran through the founder personally. That worked when the group was smaller; at its current size it was slowing the business down and, with succession approaching, left no tested structure for decisions to continue without him.
The second generation wanted to professionalise governance and bring in non-family executives without losing the speed and informality that had built the group. Complicating matters, each operating company had built its own finance, HR and procurement function, with no shared standards and little visibility for the family council into performance across the portfolio.
What we did
- Mapped the as-is operating model across all five operating companies, surfacing duplicated back-office functions and unclear escalation paths
- Facilitated the family council through a structured governance design process, defining the boundary between family, board and executive management decision rights
- Designed a holding-company structure with shared finance, HR and procurement services, while preserving operating-company autonomy over commercial decisions
- Built a family employment policy and leadership succession framework covering both family and non-family executives
- Ran a change-readiness and communication programme for the roughly 40 senior leaders affected by the restructuring
The outcome
The group moved from founder-centric decision-making to a three-tier governance structure — family council, holding board, operating-company management — formally ratified by the family shareholders within nine months.
Shared services consolidated finance and HR from five separate teams into one, removing duplicated headcount and giving non-family managers a clearer career path than the previous silo-by-silo structure offered.
The family council has since used the same governance template to appoint the group's first non-family CEO for one operating company — a step it had resisted before the engagement.
Facing something similar?
Our Organisation & Talent Advisory practice works with GCC leadership teams on exactly this.