In the Blood: Battles to Succeed in Canada's Family Businesses - Hardcover

Pitts, Gordon

9780385258296: In the Blood: Battles to Succeed in Canada's Family Businesses

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385258291 ISBN 13: 9780385258296

Publisher: Doubleday Canada, 2000

Power struggles; patriarchal or matriarchal despots; dysfunctional families; clashes over succession; rebellion, revolution, jealousy, and revenge. Sound like Greek tragedy? In fact, it's all going on in the corporate boardrooms and living rooms of Canada's family-owned businesses -- all the way from small convenience chains up to the level of the Bronfmans, McCains, Irvings and Eatons. And don't underestimate the reach or relevance of these companies. An estimated six million Canadians work for them full- or part-time, whole communities depend on them, and their combined approximate sales volume is around 1.3 trillion dollars.

Transferring power is difficult, often painful. To see a family business pass successfully into a third or fourth generation is rare. Lawsuits and shouting matches are commoner. Well-known author and business reporter Gordon Pitts has talked to numerous survivors for his profiles of twelve companies, judiciously drawn from all across the country. Some of the families are extremely well-known -- like the Molsons and the Batas -- the others, such as the Mitchells of Saskatoon, the Prices of Alberta, the Bentalls of Vancouver, and the Cuddys of Ontario are no less intriguing. Many of Pitts' interviewees talk with raw candour and often bewildered hurt about intimate family issues.

What happens when the entrepreneurs who established these great companies try to pass the baton onto the next generation in their family? As Gordon Pitts reveals in In the Blood, the unfortunate result is often disruption, pain, and familial splits, that can leave not only the fate of the company, but sometimes even whole communities hanging in the balance.

In these remarkably candid profiles, some of Canada's most prominent business families describe the successes and failures of their empires at the hands of family members. Gordon Pitts takes these stories further, offering observations and advice to those trying to avoid such family strife while building empires of their own.

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From the Back Cover:

"A comprehensive examination of the many complex and often explosive issues that influence whether that delicate - and dysfunctional - enterprise known as the family business will endure or fail." - The National Post

About the Author:

Gordon Pitts is the editor of the Managing and Enterprise Pages at The Globe and Mail's Report on Business, where he directs and contributes to two daily pages devoted to issues of entrepreneurship, management and technology. In 1990, his first book, Storming the Fortress: How Canadian Companies Can Conquer Europe was a finalist in the National Business Book Awards. Gordon Pitts lives in Toronto.

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