Five principles of the architecture
Select a side of the pentagon.
The role of the holding
The holding owns and administers shareholdings and shares in the group’s companies, real property and movable assets, technologies and rights. It is where value is held and consolidated – not where it is traded. The role is deliberately narrow, because a narrow role can be kept to without exceptions.
A conservative approach to risk
The holding deliberately carries out almost no commercial activity of its own. It does not enter into supply relationships, does not take on operational obligations and does not appear as a contracting party anywhere it could end up in dispute with a third party. The decision costs the group a measure of flexibility – and repays it: in more than two decades it has not had to deal with a single dispute that put the group’s assets as a whole at risk.
The special-purpose vehicle model
Every commercial activity or project is carried by a separate SPV. The individuals and companies taking part enter it in the scope and form that match their role, with the terms of entry and exit agreed in advance. The structure is always designed so that everyone involved understands it; complexity that has to be explained twice is usually complexity that should not be there.
A lean centre
The holding’s governing core is deliberately minimal. Expertise is allocated project by project – through the partner network, individual specialists and the group’s own companies. That keeps the group flexible without building a cost base that would oblige it to accept briefs simply to feed itself. Being able to say no is, in this line of work, an operational necessity.
Continuity of ownership
The company has been under the same ownership and the same leadership since 2002. Long horizons make it possible to decide without pressure for a quarterly result, and to wait for the moment when a plan makes sense. The same continuity applies to relationships: most of the group’s partners have worked with it for more than ten years.
