Market Basket: Main Street Beats Wall Street

A multibillion-dollar company fires its CEO, replacing him with two outsiders clearly less qualified.

Reason? a bitter, seemingly endless family feud.

Result? Astonishingly, a revolution, an upheaval that drew nationwide attention.

Market Basket's employees refused to work and took to the streets to demonstrate. Loyal shoppers boycotted the stores. Day after day and week after week, the company hemorrhaged millions.

Last night the revolt succeeded.  The fired CEO, Arthur T. Demoulas, is back on the job and will buy the 50.5% of the company that his side of the Demoulas family does not already own.

Arthur T. did a great job of building a debt-free company. Now we'll see if he can revive an indebted one.

The financial planning lesson
Back in Estate Planning 101, we learned the expected progression of a successful business: A small company grows, attracts outside capital and eventually goes public. Once the company's shares are publicly traded, family members who wish to liquidate their holdings can do so at a price set by the market. With luck, family members remaining active in the business retain a large enough minority interest to maintain effective control.

Maybe that's how it worked in the 20th century. These days, a company such as Market Basket could not long survive if its shares were publicly traded. Corporate raiders (sorry, "activist investors") would swoop in swiftly to maximize shareholder value.

A few businesses have managed to go public while maintaining family control, although Wall Street tends to resent the strategy. Why invest in, say, The New York Times Company, when shares available to the public have insignificant voting power compared to shares held by the family?

For the private investor, the answer may be that it's smart to own part of a company whose management is free to work toward long-term goals.  Mark Zuckerberg certainly values that freedom.

Related post: The Family Business Fight That Just Won't Stop