Robert Stoll (“Boyo” to his friends) is a 75-year-old youngster and a serial entrepreneur. After Philosophy and Economics at Oxford and an MBA at INSEAD, he has been pedalling hard in the world of SMEs in Luxembourg since 1974.
He is fascinated by his research on “Business Transfer in the Absence of Natural Heirs. An Auto-Ethnographic Essay and a Paradigm”, which is the title of the thesis that he will defend in September 2023 his Doctorate of Business Administration.
In Europe, every year, hundreds of thousands of “Emeritus Patriarchs” must pass on their SMEs to people outside their family. Very often they find themselves confronted with the tension between a “Hard” objective (the pure maximisation of the selling price) and a “Soft” one (the sustainability of their company, with its ethical values and corporate culture).
Based on ten business transfers in his group of companies, Boyo has abducted a paradigm that he calls “OBO + LMBO + KISS”. It substitutes “Temporary Patriarch Capital” for traditional private equity funds. Thanks to the quality of the relationships between the Patriarch and his “dream team” of “intrapreneurs”, the latter become partner-owners and the “Soft” values are privileged.
Thesis Direction
Pr Jean-François Gajewski
Thesis Title
Business succession in the absence of natural heirs. Auto-ethnographic essay and paradigm.