Later in the summer of 1993, following the IPO, Robert and Margrit joined two other couples for a luxurious, six-day fishing trip to Alaska. Whisked away on a private jet leaving from Napa Airport, the group boarded a seventy-five-foot cruiser outfitted with four state-rooms, a full crew, and a chef. The trip in the company of the frozen-food heir Clarke Swanson, Bill Hall, a music industry veteran, and their wives, was meant to be a joyful commencement to Robert’s new life. It turned out to be anything but.
The problem was Mondavi’s plunging stock price. After the disappointing first day of trading, it continued to fall. A week after the IPO, it closed at $11.25 a share—17 percent below its original price. Three weeks later, it had sunk by 20 percent. By week five, in mid-July, MOND had hit $9.75. By week nine, it dropped even further to $8.125—a full 40 percent below the IPO price. Between the time that Robert and Margrit climbed aboard the jet and their arrival in Alaska, the stock dipped to a new low of $6.50. More than half the wealth held in the company’s stock had simply vanished over the summer and Robert, who got the bad news during a shore visit, experienced a business and personal crisis.
Robert examined his heart, wondering if he might have avoided the problem by handling his sons differently or giving them more control early on. He worried that everything he had worked for—his company and his family’s good name—would be lost if the stock plunged further.
Robert spent most of the journey talking about the problem of the plunging share price. But the business issues couldn’t be separated from the family dynamics, and that led him to mulling over his own shortcomings as a parent. To Bill Hall, he confided his regrets at being away from home so much when his children were young, as well as spending so little time now with his grandchildren. He also pondered his decision to place the operation of the company in Cliff Adams’s hands, instead of allowing his own sons to run it themselves. Did he lack trust in them or was he simply refusing to fully let go? Michael, in particular, seemed to suffer from “Prince Charles syndrome”; he held an elevated title but had little real operating responsibility, while Adams’s role was to run the company for the prince regent.
Robert also had other worries that week. As the struggles between Michael and Timothy escalated, Robert feared a repetition of the family pattern that had led to the breakup of his original family three decades earlier. Between talking, writing page after page in a journal he had along with him on the trip, and drinking good wine each night, Robert turned over in his mind how to handle the problems. His bad luck in the fishing chair mirrored his situation: While Margrit landed a forty-four-pound halibut and Bill Hall’s wife, Evelyn, reeled in a seventy-five-pounder, Robert didn’t get a single bite.
As Robert was bobbing along in a fishing boat off the coast of Alaska, Michael, Adams, Greg Evans and other executives were grappling with the problem from the company’s headquarters in Napa. None of them had imagined they’d suffer such a painful rebuff from investors, and the experience, for them, too, led to some soul searching about whether the investment community knew more about the business’s worth than the family did.
One of the problems was that a large majority of the shares were held by institutional investors, rather than by hobbyists and wine lovers who simply owned a share or two of MOND to get discounts on wine purchases. Hedge fund managers and arbitrageurs were different from other financial professionals that Michael or the executive team had encountered before. It didn’t take long for them to realize they’d made a key error in assuming that they could woo analysts and investors in the same way they had wooed wine drinkers, critics, and retailers over the years. Mondavi had long relied on wine education and comparative tastings to sell its products. It figured it could approach analysts in the same personal way: leading them on a tour of the vineyards, pouring a crisp Fumé Blanc or an elegant Robert Mondavi Reserve Cabernet, and counting on the romance of the setting to work its magic. It did not occur to them at first that analysts cared more about building an accurate model of next quarter’s earnings than discovering whether Mondavi’s best Cabernet was as good as a Haut Brion.
Because it enjoyed so much success in public relations under Harvey Posert’s direction, the company didn’t hire a specialized investor relations manager before the IPO. Instead, it relied on Greg Evans to walk analysts through the numbers and Peter Mattei to field questions on production and vineyards. Evans, in particular, had rapidly assumed more responsibility. He had first joined Mondavi in 1978 as a manager of its bottling and warehouse operation in Oakville and Timothy and Mondavi’s then CFO, George Scofield, quickly spotted Evans’s talent. Less than a year after joining the company, Evans was admitted to Harvard Business School, and the company offered to pay his tuition if he’d rejoin it after graduating. Evans declined the tuition offer but returned to Oakville in the summer between business school years. After graduating from Harvard with distinction in 1980, he rejoined the company full-time as a corporate planning officer. Timothy took the bright and detail-oriented Evans under his wing, promoting him to CFO and then COO.
Cautious and circumspect, Evans was a perfect foil to the passionate and occasionally impetuous Mondavi temperament. He was adept at managing his relationship with the family, allowing it to bask in glory while he followed up on details behind the scenes. Unlike Ramona and even, to some extent, Cliff Adams, Evans was skilled at avoiding the crossfire between the brothers. But to some of the people who worked for him, Evans’s real genius was not so much in his facility with numbers or his ability to think strategically; it was his political savvy. Perhaps because he had grown up in a family business himself, Evans developed an effective rapport with the volatile Mondavi family. And although he was closest to Timothy for many years, he had earned the trust of Michael and Robert as well.
One way that Evans demonstrated his loyalty to the family was to become the bearer of bad tidings, of which there were plenty in Mondavi’s first earnings announcement. Issued on August 2, 1993, the news hardly reassured investors. Net revenues for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1993, were up 15.5 percent to $168.1 million, and earnings for the year climbed 21.9 percent to $8.7 million. But the crucial fourth quarter, generally the strongest quarter in the wine industry, was disappointing; the company’s net income dropped 8 percent to $3.2 million. As summer faded into fall and leaves on the vines reddened, heavy rains hit the vineyards. As well, the phylloxera infestation continued to plague the crops.
In the dark days of December, Mondavi was forced to put out an even more troubling news release, announcing that results for the second quarter and six months ending on December 31 would be below financial analysts’ projections for the periods. Questions were directed to Greg Evans, as the company’s CFO, and the release quoted Cliff Adams, explaining in turgid language that “the economic difficulties California continues to experience are the principal reasons for the expected shortfall to analysts’ estimates.” The stock dropped further on the news. Adams, for one, felt angry and frustrated that the banks that had been so helpful as the company prepared to go public did not adopt the same approach when it came time to analyze Mondavi’s shares.
Neither Michael nor Timothy’s name was to be found anywhere in the release announcing the company’s missed projections. The family preferred to leave the delivery of bad news to Evans and other staffers. But around the same time, the brothers were pulled into another unfortunate situation they could not avoid.
Enraged by the course that his life had taken, with his wife and daughters turning against him and the Mondavi empire banishing him, Gary Ramona sued his daughter’s therapist, psychiatrist, and the medical center that had treated her on the grounds that they had encouraged the recovery of false memories that had damaged him, both in emotional and financial terms. A key element in Ramona’s case was his contention that he’d lost his job at Mondavi because of the ugly rumors. That claim spurred on months of discovery, including videotaped depositions of Michael, Isabel, Timothy, and Dorothy Mondavi, among others. As the trial date approached, the family became aware of another source of disagreement that would soon be aired publicly: Robert had agreed to testify on Ramona’s behalf while Michael and Timothy planned to take the stand against him. The case was shaping up as a courtroom drama pitting father against sons and had the potential to publicly expose the internal discord at the highest levels of the Robert Mondavi Corporation.
With a subplot involving Napa’s leading family, the lurid incest trial transfixed and rocked the normally sedate valley. Network television crews and reporters from such publications as People magazine and The New York Times descended on Napa’s hundred-year-old white frame courthouse. When the Ramona trial got under way in March of 1994, the courtroom was packed every day. But it was especially well-attended on the day of Robert’s testimony.
Limping slightly as he approached the witness stand, Robert reached it and sat down to testify on Gary Ramona’s behalf. “My name is Robert Mondavi. M-O-N-D-A-V-I. I’m in the wine business,” said the eighty-one-year-old patriarch. Margrit, concerned and composed, sat in the front row of the stands as her husband explained to the judge and jury that Ramona’s banishment was “one of the worst things that ever happened in the winery.” In answers that were blunt and forthright, Robert explained Ramona’s contribution to the company’s soaring case sales and told of his decision in the mid-1980s to hand over the reins of power to Michael and Timothy, resulting in an erratic power-sharing arrangement for several years. When asked how he had felt when his sons came to him with the rumors of incest, Robert said he was “shocked,” going on to explain “my daughters-in-law were tremendously upset…. They didn’t want to have anyone who would molest a child working for the company. And I agree with them. But I did not agree that he had molested a child. I know it more so now than ever before!”
The court took a break. Although the company’s counsel had advised Robert not to say anything, he paid no heed. Reporters gathered around him as he defended in the court of public opinion the man who had been his third son. “I know the man! He works with his heart and soul. A man of great character. I think that more than ever. I feel he’s an adopted son.” Margrit, who stood by her husband, resting her hand on his arm, added, “He lost everything, much more than we can ever imagine.”
After the break, Robert climbed back onto the stand and told the court how his and Margrit’s pleas to avoid prejudging Ramona without proof went unheard. Robert read the June 18 leave-of-absence letter to the jury and Ramona’s shoulders heaved with emotion. Robert’s strong voice, in turn, came close to breaking when he admitted to the court that he had been powerless to stop Ramona’s ouster. His sons “just outvoted me,” he said. On cross-examination, he went further in explaining the disagreement between him and his sons over Ramona, particularly following the apparent confirmation of Holly Ramona’s charges after she was given sodium amytal, a supposed “truth-serum” drug. Michael and Timothy “thought they did it on business, but I also feel their subconscious mind…with this sodium [amytal] idea, and the wives being so concerned, I feel it had an effect on their judgment…. They had reasons of their own I didn’t agree with.”
Robert’s cross-examination ended with two quick questions from another lawyer. “Did you raise your sons to always tell the truth? And do they always tell the truth?” the lawyer asked him. Robert answered yes to both questions and stepped down from the witness stand. Then he walked over to Ramona and embraced him.
A week later, Timothy and then Michael took the stand. The brothers’ goal was to defend the company’s decision to fire Ramona, convincing the jury that it had had nothing to do with the rumors of rape but was purely a business decision related to what they considered Ramona’s faltering performance on the job. Although insurers were on the line for the $8 million that Ramona was seeking for the damage to his career, the stakes for the Mondavis were high as well. The family’s reputation for fairness was being challenged by Ramona and there was a risk that an even deeper schism could develop between father and sons in the course of the trial. With that in mind, the brothers strove to paint Ramona as a salesman who had failed to keep up with the times. He was a man “limited by his weaknesses,” as Timothy put it.
As Robert’s youngest son took the stand, the countercultural look of his youth still lingered, despite his title as co-CEO of a publicly listed company. He had a full head and beard of sandy-red hair, which topped a gray double-breasted suit. Slighter and fairer than his brother, Timothy resembled his Irish-American mother’s side of the family. “I have always had great regard…great affection for Gary. I have admired Gary for his dedication, for his charisma, for his energy. But over time it became evident that his organizational abilities were not as strong as his charisma and dedication,” he said. When one of the lawyers asked him, “Were you one of the people responsible for granting Mr. Ramona leave of absence on or about June eighteenth, 1990?” Timothy’s mild countenance gave way to a flicker of the anger that lay below the surface.
“Yes, I was.”
“Were you also one of the people responsible for Mr. Ramona’s termination from the winery?”
“Yes, I was.”
Timothy hadn’t forgotten the frustration and anger he had felt when Ramona replaced him as Vichon’s chief executive, despite the sales chief’s earlier apparent disinterest in the small, struggling winery. “In my efforts to get Gary to address Vichon in a timely and organized basis I was ineffective. Based on my ineffectiveness, I think my father effectively asked Gary to take charge of Vichon. I felt it was absolutely inappropriate, given that Gary was overworked and overstressed and unable to basically handle what he had on his plate at that time, in my opinion,” Timothy had explained to lawyers in the case before taking the stand. Helping to fire his father’s “third son” was, it seemed, in a small way a vindication for Timothy.
Ramona’s lawyer probed Timothy’s personal animosity toward Ramona. He certainly blamed the sales chief for the failure of his baby, Vichon, to hit its sales targets and for emphasizing quantity over quality. “I think that Gary wanted to discount it more aggressively. I wanted to continue to position it…to maintain its reputation in the marketplace for high quality, and I am right in that.” The lawyer then went on to ask why, then, Vichon was now sold at the club discount chain Costco. Timothy was forced to admit he’d not only been defeated on the issue—but defeated by his brother, flagging to the jurors and the press in the courtroom that day that the Mondavi front wasn’t quite as united as the family had hoped it would appear.
The next day, Michael took the stand. The contrast to his brother’s appearance couldn’t have been sharper. Wearing his black hair slicked back and a meticulously tailored suit, he looked as hard-edged and sophisticated as Timothy had looked sensitive. Gone was the gawkiness and vulnerability that Michael had displayed in the early days of the winery, when he was just out of college. Now he supported an assertive black mustache and the same craggy features of his father, but without Robert’s warmth or apparent humility. The man who had asked Ramona, upon learning of his divorce, what the family could do to help, was gone. In his place was an executive intent on protecting his family and company’s reputation.
“A great salesman does not make a great sales manager,” said Michael, describing Ramona as an old-time salesman “beyond his skills” in a consolidating marketplace. Like Timothy, Michael denied that the rumors had anything to do with Ramona’s termination and invoked spousal privilege when asked about his wife’s role in spreading rumors at the winery. He flatly denied that the sales chief was fired for anything but performance-related issues. “Was Gary fired because of his emotional reaction to his divorce?” a lawyer asked him.
“No. Not at all.”
“Was he fired because he was spending a lot of time building a house?”
“No.”
“Was he fired because he refused to change his role at the winery at a time when the winery needed him to change?”
“Absolutely.”
“Did your father agree with you and your brother that Gary Ramona’s role…needed to change?
“Yes, he did.”
But, in cross-examination, Ramona’s lawyer suggested that jealousy was a motive for Ramona’s firing. “Gary and my father had a wonderful relationship; essentially the adopted son that he was closer to than his blood children,” Michael confessed to a stunned courtroom. “That was fine, but Gary felt that he could do what he wanted” whether the sons were supportive or not. “We were a nuisance to him at times…. I felt that my father was being taken advantage of….”
The jurors, when asked later about their impressions of the Mondavi brothers’ testimony, suspected that jealousy had played a role in Ramona’s ouster. He wasn’t blood and in the midst of a transfer of power from Robert to Michael and Timothy, Ramona was sacrificed. Even so, although the jurors found that malpractice had occurred, they only awarded Ramona a small fraction of the $8.5 million he had sought: $500,000, roughly a year’s pay at Mondavi. Of their award, the jury placed 40 percent of the burden of responsibility on one of Holly Ramona’s therapists, Isabella Marche, 10 percent to a consulting psychiatrist, Dr. Richard Rose, 5 percent to the hospital, and another 5 percent to Gary Ramona himself, for failing to get more involved in his daughter’s problems.
The remaining 40 percent was assigned to “all other persons.” Although the jury was not required to name names publicly, they blamed Ramona’s ex-wife, Stephanie, as well as Dorothy and Isabel Mondavi, among others, for spreading the hurtful rumors. They also included in that group Dr. Barry Grundland, the psychiatrist who was battling with his ex-wife over his court-ordered support payments at that time. The jury wasn’t asked to decide whether incest had taken place, but its findings suggested the jurors doubted the truth of Holly Ramona’s “recovered” memories.
As the brothers were testifying at the Ramona trial, a pitched battle was raging behind closed doors at the Robert Mondavi Corporation. The company was in the final stages of a major business initiative: the introduction of wines made from coastal grapes that would be sold under the Robert Mondavi label. On the face of it, the plan was designed to solve a competitive problem. Although Mondavi was on target to sell more than four million cases of premium wine that year, it had a hole in its portfolio that rivals were rushing in to fill. The company’s lowest-priced brand, Woodbridge, was considered a “popular premium” brand, selling for $3 to $7 a bottle. On the other end of the spectrum, its Robert Mondavi Napa Valley and Byron wines were “ultrapremium” brands, selling for $14 to $20 a bottle, and its “super ultrapremium” wines, Robert Mondavi Reserve and Opus One, were selling for generally far more than $20. The gap in Mondavi’s portfolio was in the $7 to $14 range, which Vichon had been repositioned to fill.
By 1994, however, the company’s rivals had moved purposefully into this fast-growing segment of the market. Probably the most notable newcomer was a San Francisco–based trial lawyer named Jess Jackson, a self-made man who labored as a longshoreman, policeman, and lumberjack in his early years before turning to the law and then becoming a vintner. He began buying land in Sonoma, the less glamorous valley to the west of Napa, in the 1970s and produced his first Chardonnay in 1983, priced at $4.50 a bottle. Accidentally, his winemaker created a slightly sweeter wine that consumers liked.
By the mid-1990s, Kendall-Jackson Vintner’s Reserve Chardonnay was priced at $14 a bottle, aiming directly at the ultrapremium segment, the area where Mondavi was weak. From 18,000 cases in the early 1980s, Jackson seemed to have come out of nowhere to sell 1.7 million cases a year by 1994. His success didn’t go unnoticed by Southern Wines and Spirits, which by then was the country’s largest wine and liquor distributor and had distributed Jackson’s wines in California since 1988. Representing both Mondavi and Kendall-Jackson at the time, Southern’s California head, Ted Simpkins, privately warned Michael that he needed to quickly come out with a brand to counter K-J. “You’re getting hammered,” Simpkins told him.
Jackson was hurting Mondavi in other ways as well. Amid his sales success, he was buying up land for vineyards and poaching talented winemakers. He began wooing Mondavi’s veteran winemaker, Charles Thomas—the man who made its highly respected Napa Valley Cabernets.
Thomas, for one, had been firmly in Timothy’s camp in his doubts about extending the Robert Mondavi name across its various brands. While the marketing and sales side of the company, led by Michael, pushed for brand extension, Timothy voiced doubts, arguing that it could lead to confusion on the part of some consumers about whether they were buying the company’s top- or bottom-shelf wines. But just as Timothy had lost the power struggle over Vichon’s repositioning, he also lost the fight over Robert Mondavi Coastal wines, which were rolled out against his objections in May 1994.
Timothy was unable to get his point across, in large part because he had undermined his credibility with his family by leaving the mother of his five children for Holly Peterson. Against his father and brother’s strongly voiced feelings, Timothy had formally separated from Dorothy by 1994 and was deepening his ties to Holly. Those changes cost Timothy the ability to win his father to his side on business disputes, weakening his power base relative to Michael’s.
Robert’s younger son would point out the similarity between his and his father’s situation to numerous friends and colleagues over the years, but what he overlooked in his argument was the fact that he had been the harshest of Robert’s children in condemning his father and Margrit’s affair—a fact that few family members could forget. Yet because of the precedent set in the Charlie Williams and Dorothy Barajas affair, Timothy and Holly’s relationship drew fire. Arguing that the couple would be violating the company’s code of ethics, which prohibited managers at Mondavi from dating or being married to their subordinates, Michael had insisted to Mondavi’s board of directors that Holly must resign. After lengthy discussion, director Bartlett Rhoades delivered the painful news and Holly eventually left her job at Mondavi. The fact that Michael had initiated the ouster further estranged the brothers.
Miserable and under intense pressure, Timothy let his guard down for a black-and-white photograph in that year’s annual report. Robert, Timothy, and Michael are shot in profile, each holding glasses of red wine, against the vineyards. While Michael and Robert look buoyant, Timothy has got a deeply troubled look on his face as he is positioned between his father and brother.
Timothy’s characteristically passionate style of advocacy in business meetings also increasingly seemed at odds with the changing culture of the company. Shortly before it went public, Mondavi realized it needed to bolster its board of directors, which up until then had been made up mostly of family members and longtime friends. In 1992, it recruited the lawyer Frank Farella as Timothy’s choice for a director, and investment manager Philip Greer as Michael’s choice to join Bartlett Rhoades, Marcia’s pick, as the board’s three outside directors, although all three had strong ties to the Mondavis.
As well, at Michael’s initiative, it decided to hire Alan E. Schnur, a Towers Perrin consultant, to survey employees shortly after the IPO, as Mondavi’s stock was plunging. Schnur, an intense man who had earned a Ph.D. in psychology and had consulted for a number of Silicon Valley companies, was hired to assess employee morale and gauge its leadership. Unlike any of the 150 or so previous surveys he had done, he found that the company, and Robert Mondavi in particular, commanded an astonishing level of loyalty. People told Schnur that “they’d lay down in front of a train for ‘Mister’”—meaning Mr. Mondavi, as Robert was called.
At the same time, Schnur’s survey uncovered deeply felt frustration and concern by employees around the question of the company’s leadership and decision making, with these problems originating from the family. Echoing the complaints voiced by Gary Ramona, staffers told Schnur and his team that decision making got bogged down in lengthy meetings and that, if decisions were made, they were often reversed or abandoned.
The Towers Perrin group presented their findings first to the head of human resources and Greg Evans, and then to the family, and eventually spread the message to large groups of employees in the Vineyard Room. Schnur would begin the presentations with the good news of finding an exceptionally high level of commitment among staffers, coupled with the bad news of “extraordinarily high frustration.” The study touched a nerve: Staffers were riveted by what he said and some ended up crying during the presentations.
Despite Schnur’s troubling message, the accuracy of his diagnosis and his skill in expressing the problem impressed the family enough that they turned to him for guidance. Following the results of the survey, he began helping the three Mondavi men work better with one another, filling to some extent the role left empty by Dr. Grundland’s departure. In the meantime, the results of the employee survey, coupled with the low stock price, sent a warning shot to Mondavi’s outside directors that they had to do something or they would be neglecting their fiduciary duty to protect shareholders’ interests.
Frank Farella, the San Francisco lawyer who grew grapes in Napa and was a close friend of Robert, had advised Timothy that he should consider stepping down from the co-CEO role. Timothy at first refused to take his advice, since it meant playing second fiddle to his brother. But with the stock’s dramatic drop, the outside directors realized they might have to force the issue. Farella, Greer, and Rhoades met and concluded that Michael and Timothy’s experiment as co-CEOs had failed. With his personal life in turmoil and a lingering habit of tardiness and disorganized work habits, Timothy had lost not only his father and brother’s support in the CEO role but also that of the independent directors. Their experiences at other companies and organizations made them less tolerant of his shortcomings.
The outside directors also had concerns about Michael, who did not seem to have a natural interest or aptitude for the nuts-and-bolts duties of a CEO that Cliff Adams and Greg Evans were then performing. Worse, the bickering between the brothers had grown so intense that at times they’d delay board meetings, failing to agree even on an agenda. Problems like these led the directors to brainstorm ideas. Some suggested kicking both brothers upstairs and installing a non-Mondavi as CEO, which was exactly the same recommendation that Price Waterhouse had made fourteen years earlier.
Meanwhile, Farella and Greer continued to work behind the scenes for weeks to try to convince Timothy to step down. Greer focused on Robert, who seemed to feel protective of his younger son. Over breakfast at the company guesthouse, behind Michael’s home, Greer sat down with the Mondavi patriarch, hoping try to change his mind. Over several hours, Greer talked, sketched out organizational charts, cajoled, and finally even threatened to quit the board if Robert wouldn’t agree to scrap the unworkable arrangement. “Bob, I’m always going to be your friend. But I just can’t stay on the board unless we resolve this logjam.”
Robert, who’d arrived at the breakfast carrying his own yellow legal pad filled with single-spaced, handwritten notes laying out the reasons why his sons should remain co-CEOS, resisted the idea of removing one or both of them from the job. Since it was then down to a choice between his sons, Greer advised him to choose Michael, who he considered far and away the stronger candidate of the two. Greer believed Michael could do the job but had been repeatedly sabotaged over the years by his brother and father. As the lunch hour approached and they remained at an impasse, Greer set a deadline: If Robert wouldn’t make a change, Greer wanted his name removed as a director from the company’s proxy—and the SEC document was due at the printer shortly.
Michael quickly learned of Greer’s ultimatum, and he and Timothy scrambled to come up with their own compromise to make sure a Mondavi remained in charge of the company. He urged his father to pick between the two of them, vowing that he would accept Timothy as the sole CEO, if necessary.
Despite the recommendation of Farella and the other independent directors, Robert made what, in one respect, might be described as a gently Solomonic decision or, from another perspective, as a milquetoast sop to both his sons: Michael would become sole CEO and Timothy would step down to become managing director and winegrower, in charge of vineyards and production. The informal understanding was that Michael, since he was older, would get first shot at being in charge. Then, in five years or so, Timothy would take his place as sole CEO. The hand-off idea stepped around the potentially explosive matter of Robert’s choosing one son over the other.
In the annual report for 1994, published in October, the photograph of Michael that accompanies his letter shows him brimming with what can only be described as joy, his eyebrows arched and wearing an unusually broad grin. Was it any wonder? After working under his father all of his adult life, Michael, at age fifty-one, was finally in charge.
“I am now the President and Chief Executive Officer providing family leadership and management focus on our growth opportunities,” as Michael explained the shift to shareholders in the company’s annual report. “Clifford S. Adams will continue to be the family’s principal advisor and to have the lead oversight role in the financial and operational aspects of our business.” What the report left out, of course, was Michael’s next plan for consolidating his power. And that involved shedding many of the employees his father had hired, including one of his most trusted advisors.