Here is our next issue of our Family Business Newslettler !

As most of you are aware, the Chair had organised the Third Asian Invitational Conference on Family Business at the ISB during February 4–6, 2011, with “Future of Family Business – Challenges and Strategies across Generations” as the theme. Day One had an Academic Conference where 20 cases were presented by academicians from India. As part of it, a workshop on Case method in the context of family business was conducted. Days Two and Three were devoted to a business conference where eminent speakers like Dr. Frank Stangenberg-Haverkamp (E.Merck KG, Germany), Dr. Dieter Spalti (Spectrum Value Management Ltd, Switzerland), and Dr. Manu Chandaria (Comcraft, Kenya) shared their experiences on different themes. More than 320 delegates attended the conference and listened to 20 speakers. The conference provided a great platform for sharing insights on topics focusing on family business. Please visit the Conferences section on our website, www.isb.edu/familybusiness, for more information.

In this issue of the Family Business Newsletter, we have included summaries of two interesting articles, one on stewardship perceptions in family business, and the other on ethical focus and financial performance. Hope you will find them interesting.

We would also like to share information from Mr. Edouard Thijssen, CEO of Trusted Family (and a next generation member from the Aliaxis family business), on a social network site that families can have for themselves. TrustedFamily (http://www.trustedfamily.net) is a secure communication and collaboration intranet specifically developed for family businesses and family offices. Today they have clients in 12 countries that control companies with over USD 240 bn in combined sales. They would like to develop their business in India. We thought the idea would be of interest to some of our readers. Frankly, we do not know much about the organisation. If you wish, please visit their site for details:

• Company presentation: http://www.vimeo.com/16846429
• Product demonstration: http://www.vimeo.com/16846265

The password to watch the videos is "demo".

As always, I encourage you to send interesting articles which we shall include in our forthcoming newsletters.
 

Best wishes, Professor K Ramachandran Thomas Schmidheiny Chair Professor of Family Business and Wealth Management