YouSaid · the spoken record

Martin Franklin

lines on the record: 50
first: 2020-07-17
most recent: 2020-07-17
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Well, I wish I knew that there was going to be the greatest long-term growth in equities in history, because you could probably use a pen and been, you know, pin rather and been successful in investing just by buying something 25 years ago and keeping it. But I guess outside of that, I think sticking to one's lane is what I've learned over the years, is if you really know something in depth, stick to it for the long term. And I think that you can make superior returns doing that instead of being, if you like, too wide in your approach. I think that's something that over the years I've learned pays better. If you really know a space and focus on it or have a philosophy about the kind of business that you like and stick to that, we're going to make better returns.”
2020-07-17 · Masters in Business · Martin Franklin on Building Businesses (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For me, I think by far and away the most important thing to learn is how to communicate. I think so many kids today, they're very smart technically, but IQ is a lot better than their. And so I would say really learn how to write, be able to communicate in writing. It's not just about a short email. It's also the personal touch to it, how to write a letter. I think learn how to treat others as you would expect to be treated. The right way to present yourself is those are, to me, I know they sound very basic, but those skill sets that have often been lost in our youth, I think.”
2020-07-17 · Masters in Business · Martin Franklin on Building Businesses (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, my favorite book, I've just finished actually. Have you ever read American Kingpin? It's all about a fellow who built the Silk Road, which was this, you know, place where you can buy and sell pretty much anything on the dark web, someone who's not really a technology person, I thought it was fascinating. It's also a quick, easy read. I really enjoyed that. You know, I tend to read books that are more historical context. One of my favorite books of all time is called The Third Chimpanzee, which is an early book by Jared Diamond. Paul Johnson's Modern Times, another favorite book of mine, all the Yuval Hariri books I rather like, sapiens, Homodaus, they were great books. That's my kind of reading. Haven't figured out what I'm going to read next. I just literally just finished American Kington.”
2020-07-17 · Masters in Business · Martin Franklin on Building Businesses (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For sure, you know, he certainly was in all my formative years, so my priorities in life. But I worked for Wilbur Ross with my first real job at Rock at the time. And Wilbur was a great mentor for me. He was very kind teaching me things in the early days. And I really knew nothing about business. I was a political science major. I'd never taken a business course or anything like that. So he was really someone who was a big factor. And then my father's partner, Jimmy Goldsmith, you know, watching him when my father were at work and doing what they do.”
2020-07-17 · Masters in Business · Martin Franklin on Building Businesses (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They're fighting and it's frighteningly accurate. I watched an interesting movie on fungi, which I find fascinating. So yeah, those are sort of my favorites so far.”
2020-07-17 · Masters in Business · Martin Franklin on Building Businesses (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You want I watched the other day watch Eurovision, which is Wolf Farrell's latest movie that got launched on, I think it's on Netflix, which, you know, because I grew up with the Eurovision Song Contest, I thought was extremely funny. So that's my latest favorite. I've been watching all the episodes of Fouda. I don't know if you know that series.”
2020-07-17 · Masters in Business · Martin Franklin on Building Businesses (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right? Less formal of a ceremony. It was equally formal, but it was done by an envoy. It was done in Antigua. But they send an envoy over from the UK to oversee it. And I know Creamslist. I actually have been to Buckingham Palace and all that, but that was more charitable things in the UK.”
2020-07-17 · Masters in Business · Martin Franklin on Building Businesses (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Very much so. No, very much so. It's something that's on the Queen's list, but it's something that the recommendations come from the colony. So it's an honor. I don't take it too seriously. It helps every once in a while getting a good reservation at a restaurant.”
2020-07-17 · Masters in Business · Martin Franklin on Building Businesses (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, little things to a population that's relatively small make a big difference. So that's really the role I've played. It's not a formal role. It's a role I play because of my connections to the island.”
2020-07-17 · Masters in Business · Martin Franklin on Building Businesses (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Kig is a small place. My family have been there for over 30 years. My parents live there. They've been citizens there for many, many years. So, you know, my love of the island, it's a small island, only a population where we have about 100,000 people getting connected to the right people outside for governments of small countries is sometimes not easy. So what I do, it's not a job, it's an honor to do it for them. But I try to connect them wherever I can to the right people who would take an interest in investing in Antigua or helping Antigua in any particular way, particularly when we have crises. You know, we had a hurricane that basically wiped out Barbuda. So I was quite involved with helping them with relief efforts. And really the same thing with COVID-19. We were doing a lot of things in the ways of food programs and sourcing medical supplies, flying medical supplies down to the country.”
2020-07-17 · Masters in Business · Martin Franklin on Building Businesses (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I actually haven't been involved with wounded warriors for a while, but when I raced bad water, I actually raced for Wounded Warriors. I had a soldier, her name's Steve Robeson, still a good friend of mine, who lost his leg in Mozilla. And I actually host him every year still now for holiday. My home in Antigua. And, you know, just an American hero. And I was quite involved in their early years in Wind of Warriors, but really as a fundraiser as opposed to anything else. Obviously, the unfung heroes in our country are the masses of wounded veterans that have come home and need support and work and everything else. One of the things I love about API, the company that we invest in today, it's a lot of military vets in the business, which builds not only a great culture, but a great work ethic as well.”
2020-07-17 · Masters in Business · Martin Franklin on Building Businesses (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The team around he's been with me for my career. As I told you earlier, Ian Ashken's been with me for 31 years, Jim Lilly, my partner on the operations side, been with me for 17 years, head of my family office has been with me for 30 years. When we find the right people, keep them around you, and you tend to navigate to the right place.”
2020-07-17 · Masters in Business · Martin Franklin on Building Businesses (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I've been very fortunate. I think that my father always used to say you make more money on the deals you don't do than the deals you do. And I think where I've been most fortunate is not making some very large errors. The only two times that I got out of my lane and did sort of venture capitally things, I lost all my money, but the amount of money we're talking about wasn't that much, relatively speaking. So they were cheap lessons, but there were lessons I didn't soon forget. And so I've tended to stick to my lane. And I've never gotten.”
2020-07-17 · Masters in Business · Martin Franklin on Building Businesses (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Permanently impaired because permanently is a very big word, but there are sectors I wouldn't touch today. No one really knows whether there will be a good vaccine that will come out for the coronavirus that we have out there today. But if there is, you know, some industries that could be permanently impaired will recover. But I wouldn't want to be in travel today. It's just not a sector that I think is going to fare well in this environment. I'd want to be in businesses where people are doing more things at home, just as sort of a general theme. So, you know, I think that whether it be the casual dining concepts we talked about earlier or vacation package companies, convention companies, things where human beings are gathering in large numbers. I'm not sure those affectors I'd want to be in today.”
2020-07-17 · Masters in Business · Martin Franklin on Building Businesses (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I would say two things. First of all, I am still active. We just bought a company at the end of last year called API Group, great company. It's the largest installer of life safety systems, fire suppression and the like in buildings in the United States. Does a lot of service and inspection work, that's regulated work, love the last vehicle that we created. We're going to create another one, I'm sure, in the coming months. And I think the markets, as all markets are, sometimes get a little upside down. You've got a lot of companies today that have very few in the way of revenues and very little in the way of profits trading at ridiculous valuations. And then you've got some really solid companies that the market doesn't seem to care about. And, you know, those things correct themselves over time. They always do. I'm not sure that I would say that there are sectors that are”
2020-07-17 · Masters in Business · Martin Franklin on Building Businesses (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's very different approaches. This one was by far and away the most successful and traded the best of all of them. So it was with hindsight the right thing to do. And I think that gave us the sort of credibility to move on to the next vehicles that we created.”
2020-07-17 · Masters in Business · Martin Franklin on Building Businesses (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, that was probably one of the easiest deals I've ever done because Noam Goddessman, who's a good friend of mine and Nicholas Nicholas Bogoans with my partner at the time, he understood how spacks work. I remember the meeting we said in his office at Georgian. He said, look, we both know how these things work and how they should look. This has brought us out the back of a napkin. And if we can agree on the terms, let's just give it to the liars and be done. And that's exactly what we did. I think the whole negotiation took about 45 minutes. The rest was done by the lawyers. And at the time, you know, a lot of these other hedge funds were looking, or these alternative managers, we call them, were looking at different avenues of how to go public. Some were going through a vehicle that Goldman Sachs had created to try and create a listing. Some had looked at the traditional IPO route. Some had looked at reverse acquisition.”
2020-07-17 · Masters in Business · Martin Franklin on Building Businesses (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“stock went from fifteen where we created the vehicle really to, I think, at the height about seventy five, seventy seven or so I think the stock was. And since COVID, it still held in there pretty well. It's over $55 today.”
2020-07-17 · Masters in Business · Martin Franklin on Building Businesses (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, you know, we've looked at a number of these different opportunities. Bill had an existing relationship with 3G. We've actually gone very close to doing another different deal with Blackstone. And my role really was to do the diligence because Bill was conflicted since he was already an investor in the 3G fund that had invested in Burger King. You know, what I saw I liked. And we ended up agreeing a transaction that with hindsight's been very successful. I mean, we really bought 30% of Burger King before it was ready to do an IPO. But we gave them, we had a billion and a half dollars or so in the vehicle. And that gave them the opportunity to deploy that capital into other projects that they were working on at 3G and really recycled the capital they'd invested in the Burger King buyout was a very successful deal but became way more successful after it had gone public.”
2020-07-17 · Masters in Business · Martin Franklin on Building Businesses (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I said, I'm in. And so one of my first ulterers was doing this race called Badwater, which is this ultramarathon in a 130 degree in the shade in Death Valley in July. And it's hard to explain, but it's kind of addicting. But I did that race. I think in that race I ran for 41 hours. And then did a bunch of other ultrasound. But I don't do those anymore. I'm too old.”
2020-07-17 · Masters in Business · Martin Franklin on Building Businesses (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a good description. I was a soccer player. I played in college and then I played in the cosmopolitan league in the New York State area until I was about 32. And every weekend, you know, injuries would make it less and less fun. And then my brother actually suggested that I try a triathlon. I did my first one and I really enjoyed it. And then I did another and another. Then somebody said, you know, you should try half Iron Man. So I tried that. And then somebody said, well, you couldn't do an Iron Man. So I went and did one of those. And then I started doing a bunch of Iron Mans and found that I enjoyed the distance. And then I met a guy called Vito Biala who said, I'm going to take you to a place where very few people have been. And I said, well, what does that mean? He said, well, have you ever thought of running in the desert 135 miles non-stop in the middle of July? I said, no, nobody does that. He said, yeah, we can do that.”
2020-07-17 · Masters in Business · Martin Franklin on Building Businesses (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I could tell you that the last time I played tennis with Bill, which was a few years ago, I beat him the first set. And that was not a good outcome from my perspective because he wouldn't leave me alone until we played again. And then we played another one. He beat me in that one. And I don't think we've played tennis since. And I don't consider myself, I played squash for pen, for a period, and I'm not a bad tennis player, but I don't play all the time. I actually probably play two or three times a year. But I'm an athlete by background. And so I can get lucky on an ass.”
2020-07-17 · Masters in Business · Martin Franklin on Building Businesses (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was a significant investment and it was economically neutral to us. So we thought it'd be fun to do a deal with Bill, which is what we did.”
2020-07-17 · Masters in Business · Martin Franklin on Building Businesses (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So Bill's a friend of mine. I've known Bill for many years. Nicholas Pagruen and I had partnered into the first three or four vehicles that we had created. And really actually it was a funny story. We were at the end of our fundraising process and we'd raised enough money to have a fully funded deal. We met Bill and he said, look, I really want to join you in this because I want to learn how these vehicles work and I'd love to be your partner. And we were like, well, when sort of it was a bit late to really think about having another party, so I tell you what, I'll give you enough money just tacking it on that it's neutral to you economically if I join you as a partner. So he invested, I actually can't remember the amount of money we were talking about. Maybe it must have been over $250 million. It could have been $500 million. I just don't remember.”
2020-07-17 · Masters in Business · Martin Franklin on Building Businesses (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We created some great companies. Obviously, one of them, Justice was Burger King, which now is restaurant brands, which is a, what, 20 billion plus market cap company, $25 billion market cap company, something like that. One of them was Liberty was used to create a company called Phoenix Group Holdings, which is now a FTSE 100 company. Nomad Food, more recent one that I've done is now the largest frozen food company in Europe. We've done a number of these vehicles and really created companies that are very notable.”
2020-07-17 · Masters in Business · Martin Franklin on Building Businesses (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They have indeed. I mean, I think I was probably the catalyst for them getting their respectability with hindsight. I think I've done $8.5 billion worth of equity investing with SPACs. The first one I did was the largest of its kind ever done, and I think one of the first done by one of the larger Bulge bracket investment banks. It was called Freedom Acquisition. And Freedom was $525 million, I believe, at the time. No one had done one. I think the largest before that was maybe $300 or $400 million. Liberty and Liberty International. And then we had justice. So we did freedom, two liberties, and a justice. Probably the next one should have been called for all, but we didn't. We changed the names after that.”
2020-07-17 · Masters in Business · Martin Franklin on Building Businesses (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, you know, capital allocation is where you really make a difference in terms of returns. You know, if you look at Jardin's history, we weren't just good owners and operators of our businesses. You went to buy equity back. We did some significant buybacks during the course of Jordan's evolution at times when we felt that the market had significantly undervalued our company. And with hindsight, those decisions were very good decisions. or buybacks or other forms of financing, you need to be adept at both. It's not just selling your product that can create value for shareholders. So we're always very cognizant of that.”
2020-07-17 · Masters in Business · Martin Franklin on Building Businesses (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Going to come their way, those are the ones that tend to get undervalued or have the wrong kinds of shareholders. We actually make a real effort to find the right shareholders, the right profile to our sectors, explain to them why our business merits investment.”
2020-07-17 · Masters in Business · Martin Franklin on Building Businesses (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, that's a very good question. I mean, the truth is you don't. What we tend to do I mean, I think that's something that is an important point to make. If you have shorter-term, hype-oriented investors, I think when you communicate with them and they understand that you're balancing the short term and the long term to drive value, that gives investors some comfort. For investors who really don't care about the business long-term prospects and just one short-term return, there's nothing we could do about that. But they tend to be in the minority. But because we've been able to drive good value over the long term, overall, we tend to attract the right kind of investors. I've always believed that you sell equity to investors the same way you sell products. For investors, there are 5,000 different public companies to choose from. Why invest in yours? You've got to give them a reason to be interested in your equity.”
2020-07-17 · Masters in Business · Martin Franklin on Building Businesses (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So that affects decision making, capital investments, long-term approach to ownership, incentives for employees and how we treat employees, I think are very different in what I do to private equity. The analogy I use is if you had an apartment and you were a renter and you had a hole in your wall, you might put a poster up to cover the hole. Whereas if you're the owner, you're going to fix the wall. That unfortunately or fortunately is the difference sometimes in approach.”
2020-07-17 · Masters in Business · Martin Franklin on Building Businesses (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'd say most distinctly it's the difference between owners and renters. Private equity, even the best of them, are renters of businesses because they own them with a specific mandate to sell them at some point in the future. So in some cases it could be six months, could be five years, could be ten years, but they always end up selling them because that's the structure of how they have their capital. I'm in the permanent capital business. So, you know, the way I invest in the public markets, the only way that I'm a seller is if the company itself is sold because somebody comes along and makes an offer for all the shares. We don't tend to look at it that way. We look at our businesses from a very, very long investment standpoint. We talked earlier about Bircher Hathaway, probably the same philosophical approach in terms of investing, that once we own something, we intend to build it for the long term.”
2020-07-17 · Masters in Business · Martin Franklin on Building Businesses (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Element's not really a, it's especially chemical company, but it really is a services company. When you really get into what it does, what it does is it helps manufacturers in their manufacturing process. And it's really the technicians as much as the chemicals that we sell them that are what our customers pay for when they're dealing with our various business units.”
2020-07-17 · Masters in Business · Martin Franklin on Building Businesses (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I mean, I'm currently involved in five quite significant sized businesses and element is one of them. Element has the same characteristics as all the other ones, which is the businesses inside Element are the market leaders in their respective niche. It's a very high cash flow business. It's got good management. It's got some really defensible moats around it. Those are really core characteristics that you'd find in our frozen food business as no mare foods, which, you know, same thing for ATI, our life safety business and Royal Oak, you know, my charcoal business. They all are leaders in their respective niche markets.”
2020-07-17 · Masters in Business · Martin Franklin on Building Businesses (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger put in as caretakers of Berkshire for the future, they will probably be very admirable caretakers, but they won't be Warren Buffett and Charlie Mucker because you can't be. That's not how life works.”
2020-07-17 · Masters in Business · Martin Franklin on Building Businesses (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'll give you an analogy. I would think of it the same way as one would think of Lowe's Corporation after the passing of Larry and Presentations founders. They're great assets, great companies, but the, if you like, the investment dynamism that existed with the founding entrepreneurs, at least for now, is not the same. That's not a knock on them. It's just a different generation and that would be a normal course of events. I think that Berkshire Hathaway will probably be the same story. I think they'll, you know, it doesn't change the quality of the assets when they're not there, but I think that the sort of innate instinct of when to make a big bet and what big bet to make is something that you don't get to pass on. You either have it or you don't. So, you know, I think whoever...”
2020-07-17 · Masters in Business · Martin Franklin on Building Businesses (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I would say, first of all, there are far fewer of them today. The conglomerates of yesterday were fueled by continuous dealmaking. They were taking advantage of accounting anomalies on treatment of goodwill and things like that that aren't the case today. They were also far fatter. They generally dealt with very large headquarters and were fiefdoms in their own. And I'd say today they're much more targeted, more disciplined, rarer, as I said, and probably get less of a discount as a result of being a little more focused than the conglomerates of the 60s and 70s.”
2020-07-17 · Masters in Business · Martin Franklin on Building Businesses (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, I think that there are retailers, quick-service retailers, food companies that have been hit differently than others.”
2020-07-17 · Masters in Business · Martin Franklin on Building Businesses (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, you know, the coincidence of timing felt that it was the right time. I think with hindsight, you know, probably the right move. Obviously, I didn't see COVID-19 coming or anything like that, but definitely was the right move with hindsight.”
2020-07-17 · Masters in Business · Martin Franklin on Building Businesses (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was about a $20 billion gross transaction, $15 billion on the equity. You know, my view, I looked at the sort of behaviors of my children and felt that a lot of the businesses inside the portfolio were becoming less relevant to the next generation of behaviors. So I felt it was the appropriate time for us to consolidate portfolio with somebody who had a similar portfolio, giving the businesses combine greater leverage and strength within their sectors. But also the decision was a personal one. I felt that we had taken the business a very long way, we'd generated superb returns, and this was the right time to move on. I was also in the process of building a family office. I had a son and had more children sort of ahead of the oldest son to come and sort of join a family office environment.”
2020-07-17 · Masters in Business · Martin Franklin on Building Businesses (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Very well from it. And that gave us the building block on which to build. And I think the rest of the story is not so much what we did right, but the things we didn't do wrong. I mean, we didn't have any real failures. We bought good businesses and made them better under the umbrella. We never borrowed too much. We used equity where appropriate. And sort of navigated that route for 15 years, stuck to our knitting.”
2020-07-17 · Masters in Business · Martin Franklin on Building Businesses (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And got back $25 million of previously paid taxes. And then we got a little bit lucky. Bush had done the stimulus bill and allowed companies to go back a further three years to recapture previously paid taxes for the NOL and got another $25 million. And that gave us enough liquidity to really solve the balance sheet issues. Our residual businesses were very profitable, as they said, about 30 million of EBITDA. Everybody thought it was a one-trick pony and its profits weren't going to be sustainable. And its profits went from $25 million to $40 million. It was the only deal I've ever done that literally doubled earnings per share on the day we did it. Obviously the stock performance”
2020-07-17 · Masters in Business · Martin Franklin on Building Businesses (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a great story. Some of it was luck. Is that? We actually ended up with 55,000 employees. The beginning was an incredible series of events. The first was one of the bad acquisitions they had made at the very beginning. And by the way, the company's loans were in the red zone, you know, the warning sort of potential default zone at Bank of America. It was like one of those sort of loans that they were watching out for. So the company was really in poor shape. But they had bought the last acquisition that they made, the very poor acquisition. They paid $158 million, if I remember correctly, for a company, but they bought it as an asset purchase. So when we sold the business for 24 million, the business that they had bought, it created a large NOL, and we filed an accelerated return with the government.”
2020-07-17 · Masters in Business · Martin Franklin on Building Businesses (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“End of that board meeting, they decided to fire the CEO. And 90 days later made me chairman and CEO. And Ian, vice chairman and CFO. And I think split adjusted the stock was about $1.20, if I remember rightly, about $10 pre-split. And we built the company from there. It was about a $250 million business with about $30 million of EBITDA. And it was one of those stories where the board decided to actually invite in a very rare story where the board decided to invite in the protagonist and actually saw that I had a plan and a view and shareholders were richly rewarded. We built the company for 15 years, 34% compound return, sold the company when the stock was about $60.”
2020-07-17 · Masters in Business · Martin Franklin on Building Businesses (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I actually didn't join it. I forced myself upon it. I would be more. I bought 9.9% of a company called Ultrista, which was a spin-off from Ball Corporation and made a takeover, take private proposal to them, which they rejected. Then they made another and another. And basically they had made a couple of very poor acquisitions. And every time their numbers came down, I readjusted my offer and management continued to fight me on it. And in the end, they held an auction. I was the only bidder. And finally, the board decided to invite me to be a director at Exchange for a standstill. So Ian Askin, who's been my partner in right hand for the last 31 years, Ian and I went on the board. I went to my first board meeting. It was an extraordinary event.”
2020-07-17 · Masters in Business · Martin Franklin on Building Businesses (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Stores in Minnesota called Benson Optical, hence the name Benson ICAR, and they ran dispensaries inside ophthalmologist offices. Anyway, that's how we started. With a bit of smoke and mirrors, it gave us a business with about $50 million of volume and very little in profit. And we were off to the races. And long story short, we started buying manufacturers and distributors of eyewear. the largest acquisition we made was a company called Optical Radiation, which I think we bought in 1994, which was a home run transaction. 1996 and returned to investors to stop went from 38 cents to $9.70, if my memory recalls, right? So we're not too shabby. And that was my capital base, quite frankly, from which everything else I've done was built.”
2020-07-17 · Masters in Business · Martin Franklin on Building Businesses (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sure. Well, I really started with very little money and I had made some money when I was working with my father. But basically, it started with my buying 11 optical shops from a company called Stirling Optical, which was going bankrupt. And I got an SBA loan. I think I put up $100,000 and bought these stores. I think it was the only SBA loan that Nat West made that year. It was one of those years that was a, you know, down economy. They had made many loans. Anyway, we bought that business and sold it into a shell company called Ehrlich Boba Financial, which was a then defunct former municipal bond broker. Stock was 38 cents a share when we reversed it in. We at the same time bought a chain of formerly bankrupt”
2020-07-17 · Masters in Business · Martin Franklin on Building Businesses (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, I'll tell you, I had a very close, I still have a very close relationship with my father, but like any good son, I kind of wanted to blaze my own path. And one of the things that was very apparent to me was it was much less fulfilling to break up a company. And, you know, when you're building something, everybody's sort of rooting for you. The investment community's rooting for you. Employees are rooting for you. The establishment is rooting for you. You know, when I started on that path of building Dens and ICA, it was just all the energy was positive energy. And so I found it much more enjoyable. And, you know, again, I don't know what my father did. It was necessary, but it was very much anti-establishment. It was often hostile. There were people laid off as a result of these things. Whereas when you're building, you know, you tend to be.”
2020-07-17 · Masters in Business · Martin Franklin on Building Businesses (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Highly unusual. I mean, I think I was only about 24 or 25 years old. Probably did more MA than most investment bankers in that time. But it really was quite an experience. We took a headquarters from 110 people down to seven. And we had certain businesses within the group, didn't even know that it had happened. The underlying businesses were of varying quality, but there was no doubt that they were all very appreciative of being sort of let free from the shackles of a fairly poorly run conglomerate.”
2020-07-17 · Masters in Business · Martin Franklin on Building Businesses (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Know, I think I learned a lot in those early years. One of the things I learned was that corporate headquarters were a bit of a waste of time and money. That view hasn't really changed. My father always used to say the quality of a corporation is an inverse proportion to its location from its headquarters. In other words, the further away they were from the headquarters, the better the business. Often those rules are true, but that was probably the biggest thing. I mean, what my father and Jimmy Goldsmith did in those days was the necessary act to decongomerate the conglomerates of the 60s and 70s and certainly served its purpose.”
2020-07-17 · Masters in Business · Martin Franklin on Building Businesses (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's never very easy. I describe myself as a business builder. You can't fit that on your immigration form when they ask you to describe your employment, but that's kind of what I am. Bit of an operator and an investor, I guess, a hybrid.”
2020-07-17 · Masters in Business · Martin Franklin on Building Businesses (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source