Albert Frère (1926-2018) | Echo

Albert Frère left forever the scene of the financial markets. At 92, he, who had vowed never to stop working, is now condemned to leave his main collaborators to continue his work.

"Groupe Bruxelles Lambert (GBL) sadly announces that Albert Frère, Honorary Chairman and joint controlling shareholder of the company, pbaded away today at the age of 92," announces Monday morning GBL

.

Albert Frère was part of this quilt of autodidact managers and able to transform, without magic wands, an acquisition in business in "gold". The operation that will mark for a long time still minds is the one that concerns the sale of 30% of RTL Group against 25.1% of the capital of the German Bertelsmann. This transaction had allowed to enter the coffers of GBL a buxom capital gain of 2,378 billion euros in 2006, in just 5 years! "The best deal I have ever seen so far", exclaimed some time later the American Henry Kravis, co-founder of the famous investment fund KKR in 1976, and that Brother had met some years earlier.

Trader of nails at the age of 21 in his native region of Charleroi for Frère-Bourgeois Family Establishments, in the aftermath of the Second World War, Albert Frère had managed in half a century to develop the family's business affairs. in a real financial empire. The value of GBL, the entity of the sphere Frère-Bourgeois listed on the stock market, is currently valued at 15 billion euros. This holding belongs to Bel 20, and this since the creation of the index in the early 1990s.

The luck of Brother, or rather his flair, had told him to cede to the Belgian State, in 1983, the interests that his family members held in the steel industry. Just before the steel industry plunges into its worst crisis in recent decades. This operation allowed him to have at the time an enviable kitty of 27.8 million euros. A treasure of war that opened the doors of high finance.

His meeting, not long ago, with the Baron Léon Lambert had been decisive for the rest of his career. In search of an investor who would accept to recapitalize GBL, indebted at the time for 500 million euros, Léon Lambert had suggested to Albert Frère to board the holding. In exchange for a 35% stake and the control of the management of the business -Brother could not help but play the conductor-, members of the Brother family agreed to pay 64.5 millions of euros. It was in February 1982.

The Frère family had boarded GBL with the wealthy Canadian Paul Desmarais Sr (Power Corp.) who was just trying to invest in Europe, and with whom Albert Frère had set up the operation "Noah's Ark" in 1981. This operation was developed during the wave of nationalization of whole sectors of the economy French company decided by François Mitterrand, aimed to release the Swiss subsidiary of the French banking group Paribas from the perimeter of its French parent company in 1981. In vain, however. It had ended on failure. The two accomplices did not separate themselves. They continued their collaboration via the Swiss holding Pargesa, to which they will moor GBL.

Once installed at the management of GBL, Albert Frère did not hasten to upset the composition of the portfolio of GBL, even if shares were reduced in order to reduce the level of debt of the holding company. At the time, GBL already held stakes in PetroFina, the Banque Bruxelles Lambert (BBL) and the Belgian Royal Insurer.

It was not until the 1990s to witness a large recomposition of the portfolio. Still under the spell of the defeat, in 1988, of Drexel-Burnham Lambert in the United States in the wake of the fall of the king of the "Junk Bond" of the time, Michael Milken, Albert Frère began by selling his stakes in financial institutions. The insurance company Royal Belgian was sold to the French insurer UAP, which in turn was taken over some time later by another French insurer AXA. The bank BBL has been sold to the Dutch company ING. All these operations took place in the late 1990s.

In 1990, 36% of GBL's portfolio consisted of companies active in financial services. It was too much for someone like Albert Frère who found these activities difficult to control. He clearly preferred them to participate in industrial companies, especially those active in the energy sector, such as Tractebel and Petrofina, of which he owned one-fifth of their capital.

Brother had sensed the movement of concentration that would sweep over Europe, especially in the financial field, and that questioned the traditional patterns of the sector. "It was therefore particularly important to take the lead, and to worry about the transition of our subsidiaries to larger and more powerful sets, "he said in an interview with L'Echo in May 1998. A philosophy that is extended to other holdings, such as those held in Tractebel and Petrofina.

This way of thinking has in a way given rise to one of Brother's privileged investment techniques:
– to take an important part in an average society in Belgium,
– Swap it for a smaller one in a big foreign company while taking part in the management of it.

The most eloquent examples were the sale of 25% of Petrofina against almost 8% of Total, or 25% of Tractebel against 9.5% of Suez.

In 1999, the holdings in the French groups Suez, Total Fina, Imétal (now Imérys) and Luxembourg CLT – UFA (RTL), accounted for 96% of the GBL portfolio.

There were not completed capital operations at GBL. Among the most important ones realized afterwards, we will remember that ofElectrafina who had absorbed GBL, to rename itself GBL. It was in 2001. A little later, it was the turn of the participation in the CLT – UFA to be the subject of an exchange against 25.1% of the capital of the German Bertelsmann. And once this stake returned to Bertelsmann in 2006, GBL started to acquire 21.05% of the capital of French cement producer Lafarge, and 8.69% that of the manufacturer of alcoholic beverages Pernod Ricard.

Albert Frère's friendly relations and friendships with a number of politicians (Jacques Chirac, Nicolas Sarkozy, …) and business leaders like Paul Desmarais, Gérard Mestrallet and Bernard Arnault, helped him to weave his canvas in business. It was Félix Rohaty, US ambbadador to France from 1997 to 2000, who said of him that "Albert Frère was always listened to, without saying too much ".

A quality that was sure to rebadure both the management of the companies in which he took a stake. The man of Gerpinnes, who, incidentally, was made a baron by King Albert II in 1994, was not used to impose against all odds, but rather sought to be accepted, or even cooperate . "I do not climb the window, " he liked to say to sum up his way of investing. "The bottom line is that we are accepted by management ". "We go where we can take a role of accompanying management to achieve a certain strategy ", explained in 2007, Thierry de Rudder, the one who was considered the right arm of Albert Frère at GBL. De Rudder was managing director until the end of 2011, along with Gérald Frère, his son and at the same time de Rudder's brother-in-law. Since 2012, Gérald Frère has been Chairman of GBL's Board of Directors.

For the rest, Albert Frère built his fortune by showing patience. His policy was to always invest for the long term. "Brother has never been concerned with the short-term performance of the shares of the companies he controls "said Thierry de Rudder again.

Albert Frère had his last general meeting of shareholders as managing director on April 28, 2015. He left Gérard Lamarche and his son-in-law Ian Gallienne, still at the helm of GBL to this day, to continue his task under the watchful eye of his son Gérald president of the holding company. At the same time, her daughter Ségolène Gallienne and her grandson Cédric took a seat on the board of directors. The succession is badured.