ENTREPRENEURS It’s a 400-year view

Fedgroup founder John Field has four sons, none of whom intended to join their father’s business. They were brought up to be entrepreneurial, had their own businesses from primary school and always thought their destiny was to work for themselves.

But life has turned out differently.

Three sons — Grant, Scott and Michael — now work for Fedgroup. The fourth brother, Brett, worked for Fedgroup for a while as head of marketing but has since left to pursue his passion for photography. Grant is CFO, Scott is chief operations officer and Michael, who studied industrial engineering, heads product development.

John started FedBond in 1990, and sold 65% of the business to the Fedsure group. The family bought back that share in 2000 to form Fedgroup. The group focuses on investments (including participation bonds), retirement, life insurance, legacy (estate planning and beneficiary funds) and property.

Fedgroup is now in its 25th year and the second-generation Fields are playing significant roles in managing the business, having started at the bottom and worked their way up the ladder.

The sons’ ambition, however, is to take the family business much further.

“Our goal is to take a leaf out of the large European banking families who have been around Fields of dreams John (second from left) and his sons Grant, Scott and Michael for the past 400 years,” says Scott. “We would like to see this pass from one generation to the next, continuing and growing for many generations to come.”

Europe is home to two major financial services families: the Rothschild and the Von Oppenheim families.

The Rothschild family dynasty, started by Mayer Amschel Rothschild in about 1790, was passed on to his five sons, who set up banking businesses across Europe.

The Von Oppenheim family, whose banking dynasty was founded in 1789 in Germany by Salomon Oppenheim, still had 40 family members working in the business in the early 2000s, according to Forbes .

Though the Fields have a few centuries to catch up, Scott and Grant have made a start — they each have two children.

Grant says having a 400-year view on your business entails a different approach from that of a listed company concerned about this year’s dividends.

“As long as we make enough money to pay a reasonable salary, we are quite happy to plough all the money back into the business to grow it, to have that long-term view, to keep customers for life,” he says.

Fedgroup has five clients over the age of 100, who have all been with the group since John started the business 25 years ago.

Illustrating the group’s commitment to looking after its clients, Grant says it has lost only one client in the past seven years from its beneficiary care business, which serves retirement funds and unions.

Gillian Jones jonesg@fm.co.za