| BUSINESSWEEK ONLINE : FEBRUARY 1, 1999 ISSUE | ||||||||
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| INTERNATIONAL -- EUROPEAN COVER STORY
Achievement Is a Family Affair (int'l edition) Franck Riboud's individualism has deep roots. Three generations of the Lyons-born Ribouds are packed with extraordinary people. Father Antoine turned a French glassmaker into the Danone Group empire. Uncle Marc Riboud is an internationally renowned photographer whose work in China, Europe, the U.S., and Africa won numerous prizes and led to nine books. Another uncle, Jean, fought in the French Resistance during World War II, was captured, spent two years in Buchenwald, and became chairman of global oil-services giant Schlumberger Ltd. One sister, Francoise, founded a home for handicapped children and was active in local politics. Their achievement and independent spirit are the legacy of Franck's grandfather, Camille Riboud, who died in 1939. The son of a prosperous Lyonnais banker, Camille studied at Oxford University, and in 1910, as a graduation gift, was given the means to spend two years traveling the world. The exposure to exotic lands and interesting people fed his hunger for new ideas and gave him a passion for the arts and politics. ''HORROR OF APPARATCHIKS.'' Back in Lyons, Camille followed in his father's footsteps, becoming a banker. But his Renaissance soul chafed against the conservatism of the Lyonnais banking community. ''My family has a horror of apparatchiks--people who give you prefabricated responses,'' says his photographer son Marc, now 75. Camille cultivated friendships with writers, poets, and artists. One day, he invited around an unknown but interesting colonel named Charles de Gaulle. Camille read his seven children to sleep with Baudelaire and Homer. That intellectual climate--and the spirit of individualism he encouraged in the Riboud family--helped spawn two generations of nonconformist descendants who would pursue different paths, all with passion. ''Doing the best possible is in our blood. We are all like that in the family,'' says Marc. Antoine, Marc's older brother, at first seemed an exception. Casual and flippant, he suffered from tuberculosis in his youth and failed to pass his baccalaureate. He joked about his academic failings and has considered using Last in the Class as the title for an autobiography. But in 1966, Antoine negotiated the merger of two glass companies that formed Boussois-Souchon-Neuvesel. Two years later he made his mark, launching a hostile bid--the first in France--against glassmaker Saint Gobain, one of France's largest companies. The bid failed, but Riboud turned defeat to his advantage, buying up brewers, water company Evian, and dairy producer Gervais-Danone. During the late 1970s, Riboud began selling his glass businesses and accelerated acquisitions to enlarge his food empire. In 1981, he bought U.S. yogurt maker Dannon--founded by the same Spanish entrepreneur who created Gervais Danone--from Beatrice Foods Co. for $84 million. Antoine often squabbled with his younger brother Jean, an excellent student who shared his father's intellectual passions. Jean graduated from Ecole des Sciences Politiques in Paris in 1939 and became a banker after the war, moving to New York. There, he cultivated writers and artists from playwright Lillian Hellman to artist Saul Steinberg and French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson. It was at a Cartier-Bresson exhibit in New York that he met Krishna Roy, niece of India's Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore. Roy became his wife in 1949. Two years later Jean left his banking job in New York to return to Paris, where he became the protege of Schlumberger chairman and co-founder Marcel Schlumberger. After Marcel's death, quarreling factions of the Schlumberger empire turned to Riboud to run the company. He became chairman in 1965 and ruled Schlumberger for 20 years, until a month before his death of cancer in October, 1985. A lifelong leftist, Jean eventually became a confidant of former French President Francois Mitterrand. As the members of Antoine's generation went their ways, ''international influences washed over the whole family in waves and doubled back,'' says Barbara Chase Riboud, an African-American sculptress and novelist who married Marc. For ultraconservative Lyonnais society, the Ribouds were revolutionary, taking in foreigners as their own. ''I wasn't even the most exotic member of the family,'' says Chase Riboud. The family code demands that members downplay their own and each other's talents. ''We don't flatter each other,'' says Marc, who was stunned to see nephew Franck making headlines in the U.S. business press last year. ''I said to myself, 'Who does this kid think he is?' Then I read the story, and I thought, 'He has really accomplished something.''' Franck Riboud has a lot to live up to, but success seems to be in his genes. By Gail Edmondson in Paris _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ BACK TO TOP |
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