When you read that someone is acquiring Warren Buffett's stake, as was the case in 2016 with his participation in Skittles, this person can only be a respectable size.
For Mars the reason, the family that counts 5 generations at the helm of Mars Inc, which owns Mars, Snickers, Twix, Milky Way and M & M's, among others.
As the world's largest confectioner, he fired Buffett and its stake in Wringley to create an even bigger giant, Mars Wringley Confectionary. It's irrelevant that Buffett was the one who orchestrated the acquisition of Wringley by Mars in 2008 for $ 23 billion.
Mars, the family now, is now the second richest dynasty on the planet, with Bloomberg estimating its fortune at 126,5 billion. Forbes estimated it at 78 billion the last time it measured it, in 2016.
However, his updated data for 2019 want Jacqueline Mars, the granddaughter of the founder and owner of about 1/3 of Mars, to have a personal fortune of $ 29,1 billion. Her son, Stephen Badger, is the current chairman of the colossus' board.
The other percentage of Mars is shared by Jacqueline's brother John, and the four daughters of the now deceased third brother, Forrest Jr. (died in July 2016). For the Elder's other Forrest child, Janet, nothing is known!
You see, they are all extremely secretive. The dynasty lived for decades away from the limelight. Ever since Frank Mars learned her secrets chocolate as a commentator.
Despite the popularity of its sweets, half of that $ 35 billion a year comes from Mars-owned pet care products Mars PetCare, which has Pedigree, Royal Canin, among others. Whiskas et al.
Even today, little is known about the people who manage the sweet fortunes of the world. We know, let's say, that Frank's grandchildren do not play an active role in the day-to-day affairs of the group and inherited the company in 1999, when their father Forrest Sr. passed away.
Six of the family members are constantly playing in the Forbes lists of the 400 richest Americans, at the same time as the family alternates second and third places with the industrial Koch dynasty. Walmart Waltons are accessible to everyone.
Let's see what else is known about a dynasty that goes into the "trifles" of journalism because that's exactly what it wants…
The "patriarch" of the dynasty, Frank Mars, learned to make chocolates from an early age. He was born in 1882 in Minnesota and was introduced to the secrets of confectionery by his mother. The small, right business demon persuaded her to sell the sweets they made in their kitchen.
When he finished school, he started making molasses sweets. Ten years later, in 1911, he and his second wife (with whom they had a son, Forrest Sr) founded the Mars Candy Factory in Tacoma. Washington (the state).
Despite the fact that the business was going well, he would eventually put a padlock, since Frank did not calculate correctly the beast that operated in the same city and made him unfair competition.
No problem for Frank, in 1920 he took his wife and daughter (sent his son to Canada to live with his mom), moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota and built a new chocolate pastry factory (Mar-O-Bar Co) . Which went so well that it went public as Mars Inc and made the couple rich.
They now drove an expensive car and had two cottages, in Wisconsin and Tennessee. As for Ethel's horse, it won the famous Kentucky Derby in 1940 and put its owners in the great salons of the aristocracy.
Except that was not all, everything else! In 1923, as Mars grew older, his son Frank went to live with him and came up with a good idea, the "chocolate nougat". What we call chocolate bars today! He even had a name, he wanted to say it… Milky Way.
And it was indeed Forrest Edward Mars Sr who would make the company a giant. He had a fight with his father, got his wish and a chapter to start and in 1932 he was ready to make his own leap forward.
Although Frank was already making chocolate bars, the little one's idea was revolutionary for the time. So he introduced Milky Way to the world and the world rewarded him by making it his most commercial chocolate. America.
The son would not stop here, as he had a lot of ideas. In 1932 came the Mars Bar and in 1941 the M & Ms. Completely estranged from his father, he had in mind not only sweets, but also rice. You will hear of his other business, Uncle Ben's said!
Forrest did not grow up with his father. Shortly after Frank's second marriage, he moved to live with his mother in Canada. He studied at Yale and was reunited with his father only after finishing his studies, when he went to work in his father's business.
They never did well, as Frank was happy with what he had built and the junior was dreaming of expansions abroad. And he did his own thing. He redeemed his share of Mars and went to England to build his Mars Bar and the Maltesers afterwards. Worse still, before doing all this, he had gone to work at Nestle's European plants.
In England he also acquired a dog canning company in 1934, which he renamed Chappie's and dominated the market. So when he returned to the United States, the first thing he did was set up a pet company there, Pedigree. And Uncle Ben's of course.
In another demonstration of his business genius, he now wanted (1940) to make a chocolate "that melts in the mouth, not in the hands." And he made it by covering it with a hard shell. M & M's said it and dominated the market again. In 1954 they were released in pistachio flavor, despite the fact that he was allergic to peanuts.
A tycoon himself inherited in 1964 his father's company, Mars Inc., which he merged into a sweet giant the world had never seen before. Frank passed away in 1934 and no one knows in whose hands Mars was for these 30 years! It may have been in the hands of his daughter (from his second marriage), Patricia Mars, who passed away in 1965.
We are talking about such a secretive company that in 1999, when Forrest the Elder, its founder and president, died, Mars did not recognize that it had died or that it had ever worked for it!
Characteristic of their secrecy was the fact that in 1993 a journalist from the "Washington Post Magazine" was invited to enter the factory of Mars. It was such a journalistic success that the magazine sold out instantly. No one before or after could be proud of such a "sea bass".
Forrest had 4 children in his life, Forrest Jr., John, Janet and Jacqueline. He had retired from Mars in 1980 and by the time he left the world in 1999, at the age of 95, he had seen his fortune reach $ 4 billion. Indeed, he was so rich that that year Forbes ranked him 30th among the richest Americans.
Even better, the following two positions were occupied by his two sons, Forrest the Younger and John. Who followed the same strategy in their business and personal life, absolute secrecy.
A practice that has lasted at least since the time when Forrest Sr patented the method for Uncle Ben's rice and Pentagon tried to drag him to the courts to extort it and better supply the soldiers at the front.
Forrest Sr avoided photos and interviews, however it is known (from his two grandchildren who are now less secretive) that he was relatively stingy. And he raised his children as he had grown up, in very expensive private schools and universities, but measured in his daily life. They had to do the housework, say, to earn their living.
Fortune magazine wrote about him in 1984 that he had "extreme temperament", but managed to become "one of the most successful and brilliant entrepreneurs of the century".
Today, Jacqueline and John are the big bosses of Mars Inc, but without an active role in the group. In fact, Jacqueline is the only dynasty with a lifestyle that "reflects her status as a billionaire," as The Washingtonian observed in 2008.
Jacqueline and her first husband, David Badger, have three children, and one of them, Stephen Badger, is the current president of Mars Inc. It is under his management and relatively recently that the company began to open up to the world.
"For most of our history, in fact for 99% of our history, we had chosen to stay away from the public sphere, but we wanted our companies to be consumer-oriented. "And yet, times have changed," he told Business Insider recently.
Characteristic of this is the fact that nothing is known about the other large owner of the giant, Jacqueline's brother, John. Except for the fact that in March 2015 her queen made him a knight England. We also know that he has three children and is a graduate of Yale.
It is no coincidence that Forbes, including him in the list of the richest people in the world between 2010-2014, commented that he is "the richest man whose photo is not available in the magazine". Today he tells us that he is the 19th richest American and at No. 33 of the richest people on the planet with a fortune of 29,2 billion dollars.
Both he and the late Forrest Jr. also inherited their father's simplicity, living in "relatively affordable" apartments, according to Forbes.
"As I got older, it seemed very normal," says Forrest Jr. daughter Pamela Mars. "I did not feel any different. We did the housework, we went to school. "We did not live a different life than any of my friends."
Each of Forrest Jr.'s 4 daughters (Victoria, Valerie, Pamela and Marijke) inherited an 2016% on Mars in 8. All of them work in the company and even exchange their high-ranking positions with each other. And the roles in Board of directors of course.
The proverbial secrecy of both the family and the company led the press for decades to call its Virginia headquarters "Kremlin."
Today, Mars is the fifth largest private equity firm in the United States, and Fortune once ranked it as the best place to work. According to Pamela Mars, her success is based on the same five pillars that her grandfather had climbed: quality, responsibility, reciprocity, efficiency and freedom.
It is clear that Mars Inc is trying today to remove the veil of mystery. As for the family, so and so…