(Jan 7): The power struggle pitting one of Europe’s richest drinks families against the chief executive officer of their firm is intensifying as shareholders vote on ousting him from the main holding company.
Romy Castel, daughter of 99-year-old billionaire founder Pierre Castel, and nephew Alain Castel are vying to remove Gregory Clerc at a Jan 8 investor meeting of the eponymous beverage group’s Singapore-based holding. The dispute went public in recent weeks as family members criticised Clerc’s strategic vision and what they say is his attempt to seize power. He’s rejected their claims, saying he has a broad mandate to run the firm even if they prevail.
The closely held Castel Group had sales of about €6.5 billion in 2024 from its sprawling drinks and agricultural operations, which includes the Nicolas chain of wine stores and dozens of African beer brands. Clerc was the founder’s tax lawyer before also gaining the CEO role in 2023, and has consolidated results across a swathe of Castel operations since coming on board.
“It’s a very risky situation for a family to be in,” said Irina Curbelo, co-founder of family business consulting firm Percheron Advisory. “This implies that there has been a lack of focus on ensuring their influence is protected.”
Clerc “took the place of my father except that my father was defending his group,” Romy Castel said in a Dec 22 interview. “We want to bring back some balance.”
As the first outsider to oversee the operations of the secretive group, Clerc’s position and the public tussle with some members of the founding clan has shone a spotlight on the risks of generational change within family-controlled companies. Until Clerc was named CEO of Castel Group, Pierre Castel was the public face of the empire he had built up over decades with an iron-clad grip.
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According to his daughter, the founder still attended business meetings until a few years ago and while he remains in relatively good health for his age, he has slowed down and suffers from mobility issues.
The friction burst out into the open last month when Alain Castel, 65, who heads the wine arm of the group, Castel-Vins, said he was removed from the board of Luxembourg-based DF Holding, which consolidates the globe-spanning operations, as well its Singapore-based owner, Cassiopee Pte Ltd.
Clerc has seats on both company boards, which are among the some 30 mandates the CEO has accumulated throughout the empire, according to Romy Castel. She’s a French national based in Switzerland, where her father moved from France more than four decades ago.
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Cassiopee is ultimately controlled by Investment Beverage Business Fund in Singapore. Romy Castel said she has convened an extraordinary general meeting on Thursday of IBBM, the fund management vehicle, to seek Clerc’s removal as director.
For his part, Clerc said in a letter to employees on Tuesday seen by Bloomberg that IBBM was put in place in 1992 by Pierre Castel explicitly to separate the ownership of his empire from the day-to-day operations and that he was asked by the founder to ensure this was respected.
“My mission is clear, unchanged and backed” by the board of DF Holding, namely to improve performance, secure investment capacity and raise governance and compliance standards, the letter stated. Clerc contended that his removal as a director of IBBM “wouldn’t have any other impact” on his other mandates and role as CEO. This point was contested by Alain Castel, who said in a separate statement that the move “would effectively result in the dismissal of his other positions including his role as CEO of the Castel Group”.
A recent filing for IBBM lists Romy Castel as a shareholder with a 24% stake. Another of her father’s nephews, Michel Palu, holds a similar stake while the other shareholders on the list are from outside the family: Two former longstanding French executives, Guy de Clercq and Gilles Martignac, as well as the Singapore entity’s CEO Pierre Baer.
With the two former executives as allies “I have the majority,” to remove Clerc, Romy Castel said in the interview. “I am very, very confident.”
One underlying difficulty could be family unity, which Romy Castel said is uneven. She said that relations were good between her father and his eight siblings but they have deteriorated within the subsequent generations of descendants. The ownership is divided equally through a Singapore trust among five branches of the clan including herself, that of Alain Castel and of Michel Palu, she said.
The extent of the Castel fortune and the group’s labyrinthine corporate structure came to light through a tax dispute that the billionaire lost on appeal. A Swiss federal court ruled in a July 2023 decision that the businessman had evaded taxes as a longstanding resident in the country. Castel was fined more than €350 million.
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While the Swiss legal procedure is over, a tax probe by French authorities is ongoing, according to Romy Castel. In his letter to employees, Clerc described a “major” ongoing effort to put in order the group’s fiscal situation in France for the years before he became CEO.
Curbelo, the family business expert, said the Castel situation isn’t atypical.
“It’s very much a textbook case,” she said. “This is an example of why many successful family businesses don’t last beyond the third generation.”
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