Albert Frère to step down from GBL
Albert Frère, Belgium’s richest man and the longstanding chief executive of conglomerate Groupe Bruxelles Lambert, is to step down from the group he helped turn into Europe’s second largest holding company.
The octogenarian will quit the family controlled GBL — which has stakes in companies ranging from drinks group Pernod Ricard to energy group GDF Suez — at its upcoming annual meeting in April.
Mr Frère, who is worth more than $4bn, oversaw GBL’s evolution from a predominantly Belgium-facing business into a holder of some of France’s largest and most famous companies.
The change at the top had been planned for some time according to the board’s vice-chairman Paul Desmarais, who represents the other family that controls GBL. Managing directors Ian Gallienne and Gérard Lamarche, who have run the company day-to-day since 2012, will continue to oversee the group.
A self-made man, Mr Frère made his riches by buying up steelmakers in the 1950s and 1960s. When Belgium’s government nationalised the sector in 1979, his companies accounted for just under half of the industry.
After buying a stake in GBL in 1982, Mr Frère proved more than willing to sell off its stakes in Belgium’s national champions to other larger European rivals. This strategy proved controversial domestically, but left Mr Frère’s company with stakes in some of Europe’s largest blue-chips.
According to the latest filings, GBL owns a fifth of the cement group Lafarge, and 7.5 per cent of Pernod Ricard. It also owns 3 per cent of Total, France’s largest oil company — a byproduct of its merger with the former Belgian oil company Petrofina, in which GBL had a large stake.
Mr Frère will remain a shareholder of Pargesa holdings, the Swiss vehicle through which he controlled GBL in conjunction with the Desmarais family.
Mr Desmarais said in a statement that Mr Frère, who will turn 89 on Wednesday, was the “driving force” behind the GBL’s rise. “During all these years, I was able to appreciate his professional and human qualities as well as his extraordinary business sense which allowed GBL to become one of the most important quoted European holding companies.”
In recent years, GBL had expressed interest in turning away from holdings in “mega-cap” companies to focus on building bigger stakes in smaller companies, in order to exert more control on their governance.
Shares in GBL, which has a market capitalisation of €11.9bn, have risen 10 per cent over the past 12 months to €73.66.