Ryan Agre holds a dual role as vice president of finance and family office for Vermeer Corporation, a manufacturer of industrial, commercial and agricultural equipment based in Pella, Iowa. He discusses the interactions between the family and the family office:
This is not a family office that was formed because the business was sold or had some type of liquidation event. The family still has the operating business and plans to maintain that. Our family office is 100% embedded in the company.
We’re developing the shareholder group to maintain the business as an operating entity. So we engage with the family investment advisors to ensure that family members have the appropriate diversification in their personal investments.
And what they’re doing from an investing standpoint is also mirrored in other areas. Why do we focus so much on education, on developing the whole person? It’s so they have effective and independent careers outside Vermeer, so that between their careers and their investments, they are self-sustaining and do not have an inordinate reliance on the business itself.
There is significant daily interaction between family members and the family office on all kinds of topics, because we want to get every individual within the Vermeer family involved in some capacity so that they know who we are and how we can assist them. The ownership council has three committees underneath it that have participation from family members. For example, one is the education committee. We have multiple family members who are teachers or are otherwise passionate about education. We try to find opportunities that catch two or three adults that want to participate, which draws them in — so it’s actually enjoyable for them to participate in our governance structure.
How else do we interact with them? Recently we had an estate planning blitz. We brought in our lead law firm that we work with that performs most of the estate planning and we coordinated meetings with them with the family groups. I’m also an attorney, so I can translate what the family members and the law firm are saying if they’re talking past each other. And because I help set it, I know what the dividend cycle is going to look like, what the value of the company is going to look like for estate planning purposes. Nobody else in the room for these meetings brings that — and I wouldn’t either if I wasn’t also sitting in the VP of Finance chair. So you have these cross-functional pieces that come together and give us a lot of touch points.
For the G4s, I can also serve as a non-parental, non-grandparent advisor that they can trust, who will give them independent advice on topics such as college majors or buying vs. renting a house.
What services do we provide? We don’t generally say no to anything, but that doesn’t mean a family member calls up and we provide something. Sometimes it’s not us giving them a direct answer but rather finding a resource for them — on insurance or legal issues, for example. We’ve helped find specialists for medical issues. We’ve helped facilitate sticky international travel situations.
What we’re ultimately focused on is intimacy, just having good relationships with family members. Some members touch base with us every six months, because that’s what they want. Others we talk to almost every day.
