Parallel Session

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 Feast 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.

Now in its third generation, Raptis grew from humble beginnings when Arty’s and Arthur’s grandfather Athanasios Raptis migrated to Ceduna, SA from Greece in the 1930s before opening up a fish and chip shop in Adelaide. Soon, Athanasios Raptis began filleting his catch for local shops and, within a few years, his entrepreneurial spirit had spread to his four sons and daughter, who developed the business into seafood wholesale and retail businesses.

Today Raptis is one of Australia’s largest private vertically-integrated seafood companies and diversified property investors. The past decade has seen the transition of responsibilities from the second to the third generation family members, although the journey to continue the legacy hasn’t been all smooth sailing.

Hear from cousins and third-generation family members Arty Raptis, CEO of Raptis Seafoods and Arthur Raptis, Executive Director, Raptis Investments on how their different pathways to leadership have helped them navigate through rough seas.

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.

In this session 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.

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 three 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.