Parallel Session

Charles Dickens wrote “it was the best of times; it was the worst of times…” these words could also be used to describe family businesses with human dynamics often tearing many families apart.

Throw into a “normal” nuclear family business dynamic a blended family and statistically the odds go against a peaceful existence.

This panel brings together four women with experience both personally and professionally with divorce, second marriages, divorce again, business splits and the large sale of a successful IT business to a publicly listed company.
The panel will discuss: how to protect your business through a divorce; Estate Planning considerations from practical experience with biological and step children; and the importance of managing perception v reality in regards to the businesses financial success.

R&D investments are essential for sustaining the competitive advantage of a family business as they facilitate innovation. However, many family businesses are unaware of the opportunities that exist and how to capitalise on them.
Join us as we hear from Rui Torres de Oliveira, Researcher and Senior Lecturer at the Queensland University of Technology, who will share his insights into how businesses can collaborate with universities and other research institutions to help develop innovative products or enhance processes. He will be joined by Dr George Best from the CSIRO to talk about how to find the right funding scheme to help businesses build their new technologies and capabilities and, Ben Tait to share his innovation/collaboration story; the challenges faced and successful outcomes.

As family businesses expand from their entrepreneurial beginnings, they face unique succession challenges.
When the son of German migrant, Alfred Neumann, moved from Laidley to Currumbin in 1922 with hopes of making a modest living as a builder and cabinet-maker, he had little idea that he would one day launch an empire that would employ three generations and become one of the Gold Coast’s oldest families in business.
The Neumann Group, quite literally, has shaped the Gold Coast into one of Australia’s fastest-growing cities. Whether it be canals dredged by Neumann Contractors, steel in the high-rises by Neumann Steel, concrete and quarry products in its infrastructure by Nucrush Group, or land developed by Neumann Developments.
But as the family business has grown to a multi-faceted organisation with an increasing number of family shareholders, and with few working in the business, where does the company go from there?
Third and fourth generation family members Bill Neumann, Kathy Conforti and Blake Neumann will share the challenges this creates for Next Generation family members when there is an exceptional legacy to preserve.

Recruiting non-family talent into family businesses can be essential for a myriad of reasons: professionalising and enhancing operational functions as a business grows beyond the ability of the founder to control it alone; enabling a business to stay in family hands despite there not being a family member ready or able to take on the CEO role; or working with an incumbent generation to ready a business ahead of a potential sale, are just a few common examples.

Finding people not just great at what they do, but able to align with the vision, values and purpose of the family can be a significant challenge however, and the road is littered with examples of families, and the executives who have joined their businesses, whose expectations and ambitions have failed to materialise, usually to the cost of both parties.

Join Michael Simonyi, FBA Accredited Advisor and founder of family business specialists Simonyi Recruitment, as he facilitates a panel of family business owners, and non-family executives who work with and for them, to explore the challenges, and successes, both have experienced in their journeys.

In every business, a crisis can be just a short moment away. An unexpected or out-of-the-ordinary event could turn your world upside down and threaten your brand’s reputation. Some crises have cost companies vast amounts of money in additional costs and lost profits.

But a crisis only spins out of control if you haven’t planned for it. And you won’t have time to start planning when the crisis has already broken.

La Porchetta is a household name in Australia and New Zealand, with a 30 plus year history of franchised restaurants and a loyal customer base. The brand has faced a number of challenges in that time, including the sudden loss of its co-founder in 2010. Sara Pantaleo, former CEO of La Porchetta, will draw on her own experience to talk about: the impact a sudden crisis had on the business; how she managed the business through the crisis; and the importance of having a crisis management plan.

As we near the end of 2021, Catherine Birch, Senior Economist at ANZ Research, will discuss the current state of the Australian economy and the outlook for 2022. With structural changes from the pandemic emerging more clearly, Catherine will provide an up-to-date view on business conditions and the investment environment, and how different sectors might fare in a post-COVID world. She will explore other key areas of the economy including the labour market, household sector and property market using mainstream economic data as well as ANZ proprietary data and indicators. Catherine will also discuss the fiscal and monetary policy outlook and what it means for interest rates, and address Australia’s position within the global economy.