COVER STORY
What’s
Having Ricard as his surname did not mean Pernod Ricard rolled out the red carpet of succession for young Alexandre Ricard. But the third-gen tells Peter Crush getting turned away by the world’s second-largest spirits and wine company was the best thing that could have happened
B
y his own admission, Alexandre Ricard would much rather journalists write about his business, Pernod Ricard, and his portfolio of household brands, among them Absolut Vodka,
Havana Club, Jameson and Beefeater, than himself. It’s understandable. The latest year-end financials
show this particular purveyor of premium alcohol is enjoying exceptional results. Topline growth is up 5.1%, profit is up 5.7%, while in the United Kingdom, the firm is riding the crest of a recent resurgence in gin—sales are up 52% against a global average of 36%. Sales of Beefeater are up 52% in the UK, while Plymouth Gin is up 47%. Chin-chin all round.
PHOTOGRAPHY: GETTY IMAGES
a in name?
But with this chief executive bearing the name of
his grandfather, Paul Ricard, creator of the Ricard pastis aperitif in 1932—even Alexandre must accept that as long as he’s the boss, which he has been since 2015, his bloodline is not something he can readily escape—despite what he might initially say. “All the people working for us are our family,”
the debonair 46-year-old says with utmost sincerity. It’s quite a telling quip. For even though Pernod Ricard is the result of two family-run businesses joining forces—Pernod and Ricard in 1975—today it has quite a fluid definition of what ‘family- run’ actually means. It’s a business where family, genealogically at least, is neither required from a stewardship point of view, nor is it expected of the descendants of Ricard himself. Chief executives have arrived from outside the
Ricard family, such as Pierre Pringuet from 2008 to 2015. It could be purely happenstance that Pernod Ricard is back in family scion control and that it’s just as likely it won’t be so in the future.
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